I want to say right out of the gate that I do not judge anyone that has used this service. I am kind of indifferent to its existence and enjoy that people have choices. The freedom that is built into this platform appeals to the libertarian in me. However, I actually never have used one of these and was thinking of trying it because I want to see what happens when I do.
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Like most people on here, i would like to build my audience and I really enjoy how a lot of you comment regularly on my posts. I like to think that I return the favor because I always check out your posts in return and upvote them if I can read them and am even remotely interested in the topic matter.
So I am not saying that I am going to do it, but the curiosity is just killing me. I do not believe that there would be a positive return because if it was then everyone would be using them, every time. I do know that these bots will resteem your post to (insert however many thousand followers) but I have a hard time believing that very many of them will actually read it.
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bonus points for knowing what this is from
So I just want to know before I make this move if it is frowned upon for someone to use a service like this. Will it negatively affect my reputation? Will it draw attention to me in a manor that I would prefer not have? Have any of you ever used such a bot?
Keep in mind that I am not necessarily attempting to increase the financial reward that is received. I am just wondering if it really has any noticeable difference in the amount of people that view an article and most importantly, if there are negative consequences that come as a result from having used one.
I don't need to do this but you know, i just thought i would mix things up a bit.
I have used bitbots with the strategy outlined in this video:
Using this strategy, I had a positive return on investment of about $3-$4 with every post, as opposed to only 50 cents or less when not using it.
However, that wasn't the main reason I used it. In my opinion, the only justifiable reason to use a bidbot is to get your post to the top of the "trending" page for a particular category on Steemit.com. In theory, this should get more eyes on your writing, which could translate into more "organic" upvotes (upvotes from people who genuinely like your writing, not from people whom you paid).
This seems to have worked in my case because I did get a lot of upvotes from people other than the bidbots. So the extra "advertising" seems to have paid off. This might be similar to the way you can get more attention on Facebook by "boosting" your post.
Despite this success though, I was disappointed that it didn't lead to more followers. I was willing to keep paying bidbots for many months if it meant that I could eventually get enough followers to do without them. But it didn't seem to be working in that sense. And $3-$4 is not enough money to justify spending four hours writing an article. So I stopped doing it.
In fact, I decided to stop posting altogether and focus instead on curation.
One thing is for certain: I experienced no fallout or social ostracism of any kind from using bidbots. No one flagged my posts or even made negative comments.
As for whether you should use it, @gooddream, I think the answer is "no." You have enough followers that bidbots would probably not help you much. And you would be better off spending that money on powering up.
To summarize: I think bidbots can be helpful if you are new to Steem and have no followers. After all, it's hard to get people to upvote your posts if no one can see them. But they also can't help everybody. Some people just won't get followers no matter how much exposure they have. And some people already have followers...in which case the bid bots are probably a waste of time.
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Extremely helpful response buddy. Thanks for that!
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I'm not a huge fan of upvote bots. From a user perspective, I don't think that it is that beneficial. The problem is that when they advertise followers, many of those followers are probably also bots, and it's more likely than with average everyday users. I mean, heck, I think something like 33-50% of my followers are bots, imagine what the bot network people have.
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very good points and point taken. In the end I will likely not use them because I am already happy with what I got going on. I am just so curious!
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With that said, I do use @steembasicincome, but I don't really consider it a bot. The way it works is that you buy shares that have a roughly one-year ROI, and you and another person get one share per Steem. Because I have two accounts, I do a certain amount of self-sponsorship, but it's also something that I've been doing where I support the Archdruid Gaming community and help to retain new Steemians that I've on-boarded.
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its awesome that you have been on steem so long and not used bidbots. I run an analysis that shows bot owners take around 20% of the newly generated steem every day in profits.
Im not a fan and I do not use them, but never say never. If you are happy with a no profit no loss then they are a promotioal tool. You will gain followers but to boost a post high enough you need to really spend.
by the way, I found this post via @trufflepig, my first time checking out his curation and nice find by the AI :-)
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fantastic information Paula, thanks for the intel... for real.
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you are most welcome.
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Wait.. 20% go to bot owners? What about to vote sellers?
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I havent looked at that one, I do know it was covered but I cant remember by whom. But yep 20% to bot owners
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Hmm.. I think that its bot votes that are 20% of the total vote values.
If bot owners took 20% of the inflation it would make the overall bot use massive, majority..
Someone should look into that.
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19% of the rewards pool, my apology
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@paulag/bidbot-income-analysis-shows-bid-bots-earned-19-of-the-rewards-pool-in-2018
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Yeah. So its bot owners+bot delegators.
Since you cant easily calculate vote selling, by MB and Smartsteem the numbers are a bit higher.
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I've always said that everyone with their own theme, although in reward aspects, I don't see much use for it per se. You will only see the results both in reputation and in SP. I was curious about that a long time ago and the truth as many comment, it is much better to create your own audience.
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that's what i was thinking too. I don't really need bot comments. I was just curious because i get a ton of offers from these guys but also enjoy being on the "organic" lists. Thanks for the intel
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I used bots quite a bit but I would say they dont help you building a genuine audience. I got a lot of "great post" and other spammy comments but this was also before the last hardfork.
To encourage a discussion for your posts I would rather use steembounty as additional reward for good replies.
I personally dont think so highly of bots anymore as I used to so I am probably kind of bias in my opinion
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interesting. I have never heard of steembounty. I'll research that a bit more later today. Thanks for the intel.
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I looked into it for a bit. It did return extra rewards overall, but not usually much: at times it was a negative return from what I could tell. It can get you some followers who are looking for curator rewards, and build your rep #, but for now and probably moving forward I am "all natural" (not using) regarding vote bots. I find avoiding them helps me notice the people who do upvote and comment also, which helps build some community or at least some recognizable "faces." So far, the topic seems pretty split on the feedback I've seen. Power to everyone ⚡🐬👍
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great response. Thanks for the intel :)
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I use it and to be honest, I am only doing it to help increase my reputation. My schedule and typing style doesn't really allow me to make a well written post every day.
It's not all that effective. Most of the time no one replies. And all of the upvotes are coming from low rep bots, not real people that you can build relationships with. All you are really doing is cutting into your payout profit since the service is not free.
Honestly with a reputation like yours, I don't think it would be worth it to use them. I don't know if I can say the same for newbs like me.
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thanks for the advice pal. I just realized that I was not following you. I have remedied that situation and I actually DO read the posts of the people I follow and look forward to your next one.
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Thanks. It means a lot
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I think this is beneficial for minnows like me because by using upvote bots it can help me grow my reputation and to gain more followers. But if you are looking for profit, then maybe bidding with higher steem will help as rewards will be sliced between the author and curator.
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you are yet another person that i should have been following but was not. This situation has been remedied. Now you have 1 more "real" follower :)
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Thank you very much @gooddream. You are one of my idols here on Steemit.
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check @prc and @fulltimegeek accounts and you will see the latest posts about how much difference bot can make.
You can grow your followers but there is always a chance to lose your money.
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Actually i did not see any bad using this service except if that person is using it to promote shit of spammy post ir plagarism post. I have used it before and i can say there is nothing wrong in it. Except that it should be used to promote good and quality content and not shit post
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Being a newbie in the field, I would like to know as well. I did few readings, so far from what I understand, you will benefit from them. But exactly how much, I am not sure myself. Usually, you need to invest some to get more.
I will follow up this post just to see if any other experts opinion.
Cheers.
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Interesting enough, this post would be #3 on trending If there were no bidbots around...
https://busy.org/@trufflepig/non-bot-trending-2019-02-18
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See – here's the thing.
The bid bots are not a pay-for-effect kind of thing. The bid bots which drive up votes are effectively small betting pools where you stake some amount of money against the chance that you will be staking the most money for the largest chunk of the pool. Say, if the bot controls a $10 up vote (for the sake of discussion), if you give it $1 and no one else throws into the pool, you make a profit of $9 across the board. If you and someone else each give it $1, it gives you 50% of the vote and the other person 50% of the vote, and you've made a profit of $4 across the board. If you and two other people each give it $1, $10 is split between you and you've made a profit of $2.33.
But this is an optimistic line of approach. You never know how much somebody else is going to drop on the bid.
If you gave the same bot a $5 bid, contend with the idea that you might make a $5 profit across the board, and someone else comes in with a $1 bid, things start looking ugly real fast. You get a vote for 5/6 of that $10, or a $3.33 profit. When other people come in, your cut gets smaller, and you become more and more likely to actually take a loss on any bid buying.
Or, more succinctly – it's gambling.
If we are specifically and only talking about bots which promise to re-steem your post, you have to ask yourself "who are the people who are actually likely to see or follow a bot that re-steems people for money?" Is it people who care about quality content? Anybody can pay the bot to re-steem them. Is it people who care about what you produce? Obviously not; the bot didn't in the first place. So what you actually paying for?
If my study of the blockchain is any reflection, what you're paying for is a bunch of minimally active/inactive bot-created accounts which don't actually do anything except follow this one other account and allow it to claim that it has "a really big number of followers." And every three dollars that the bot makes in profit, it can make another fake, inactive, useless account that it can re-steem your post to.
If you care about getting valuable time and effort out of the time and effort you put into making posts, you avoid bots. Aggressively. You spend the time and money that you would invest writing the bot train and go out and find people who are interested in the same things that you are, comment on their posts, engage with them as people, and then write for that audience.
Sure, you could do something else – but why would you?
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I'll only ever use bots if I've written something that I think belongs on the trending page. Then it's up to the community to either upvote it and say "yes, this belongs here" or to down vote it "this doesn't belong here" (in theory) So I've used them twice in the last 6 months.
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Hi gooddream. I use ocdb which is a community bot that doesn't make profit. It supports it's delegators and rewards the post to a tune of 12.5% profit. It is not a get rich scheme at all but it all adds up and 20 Steem cast on the bot once every 24 hours only gains you 2.5 Steem. I like the fact it is limited and only allows a certain standard of post to go through so there is no abuse. That is the only bot I use as it is helping me grow bit by bit.
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I would advise against it. I used upvote selling services like MB and Smartsteem quite a bit for a while with little success. I did earn maybe a couple hundred STEEM which is something you earn in 3-4 days so the gain in that regard for you wouldnt really mean much. .
But with the promotion side...the truth of the matter is that if you arent spending enough to get to top trending, you arent achieving much.
The reason im saying it would probably be a bad move for you is that you are already one of the top 5 most rewarded authors on the platform because of the Xeldal upvotes. If you started boting, it would hurt your reputation quite a bit.
The engagement quality would drop the more bots you use and you would basically get the comments like chbartist is getting.
If you want to give it a shot go for it... but i really dont think you need it.
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
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