Love them, or hate them...everyone has an opinion about voting bots. I am not exactly sure where I stand in my opinion of them...but @helenoftroy and @rulesforrebels asked me to explain how some of the services work.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s9.postimg.org/9k9lhosnj/28641297_10103647917820569_589129360_o.jpg)
I have used some of these services to try to get some visibility on my posts. Remember that the point of using bots is to get some traction, you should only be using them on posts that you feel are ones you put effort in. Low effort and spammy posts are always looked down upon, and even more so when you are using bots to up-vote them.
Bid Bots and Flat Rate Bots
Flat Rate Bots
These are primarily what I use. You send the minimum to maximum amount from your wallet (in SBD or STEEM) to their account with your URL link in the memo and they will pay out X in return. You can find out the min/max amounts on their page in the heading. Check them frequently because these amounts do change over time as they increase or decrease in voting power/SteemPower.
The FLAT RATE BOTS I use are:
- @minnowbooster - I typically send 0.11 SBD and get around 0.20 in upvotes.
- @treeplanter- I send their max limit right now of 0.50 SBD and get 1.00 SBD in return, plus this bot helps a charity that has a goal to plant a million tress in Cameroon!
- @smartmarket- The amount of possible up-votes varies through out the day. I typically send around 0.45 SBD and get 2x back. You can check the current vote value and send money through SteemConnect with Smart Market. You can also sell your excess votes! I haven't done this yet, but I do plan to do it! If your vote is worth more than a couple cents you can earn passive SBD this way. Here is my referral link: https://smartsteem.com?r=emmyem84.
How to Use These Services:
Submit your post to Steemit like you normally would.
Step 1. Copy the link URL of your post
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s9.postimg.org/fdjni5h4v/28694494_10103647846927639_1053156677_o.jpg)
Step 2. Go to your wallet and enter the name of the bot, the amount you want to send (example 0.11 SBD) and paste the URL into the memo box. Double check everything is correct and press SUBMIT.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s9.postimg.org/7m2xj9567/19239667_10103647846907679_132358645_n.jpg)
That's it! Your votes should come through in a couple minutes. These services do refund you if their voting thresholds have been met. If that happens try a smaller amount or wait a bit!
IMPORTANT: Make absolutely sure that you never accidentally copy and paste in your key/password into the MEMO box! There are bots that will find the key and use it to drain your accounts and lock you out. ALWAYS double check that you are sending the correct amount and the correct URL. After doing this for a while you may get careless about how quickly you are doing this. It's important to remember to be careful!
Bid Bot Voting Services
Bid bots are a different animal all together. In order to use bid bots you need to check out a great tool made by @yabapmatt called Steem Bot Tracker.
Steem Bot Tracker shows you all the bidding bot services and how much time they have left before they vote. Make sure to check to see if the bot is actually profitable. Most of them will be negative as too many people put in their bids. I have never had much luck with these ones. I would rather use the flat rate bots. You can use these bots at a loss to gain visibility, but I would do it modestly.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s9.postimg.org/yxy6l14wf/28695467_10103647846857779_1578374513_o.jpg)
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://s9.postimg.org/4hs9mhqyn/28755139_10103647846663169_486511560_o.jpg)
Yea, this bot is in the negative! Which means that by using this bot you will be spending more than you will get back. Some people still use bots like this to gain visibility, but I don't. I have never really had luck with these bid-bots, but who knows, if you are lucky and watch the bots you might be able to catch a good deal. It's kind of like gambling.
If you do decide to use the bid bots the process is the same as using the flat rate ones, simply send the SBD or STEEM to the bot from your wallet with the bid you want and the URL link in the MEMO field. Then you wait for the bid to go through.
Some other things to note: I always stick to the bots that have a 3.5 day max voting period. There is a very "grumpy cat" that hates bid bots that vote past the 3.5 day period and he will come by and flag your posts in an attempt to fight last minute voting and abuse. Keep that in mind.
Another bot that I use everyday is @resteembot. It works the same way as the bid bots but it resteems your posts to its followers. You have to follow Resteembot's account for at least 3 hours before you use it. I like to do this for friends posts too to gain visibility for them. The pricing structure is simple. It is based on your reputation. If you have a reputation of 53 like me, you send 0.053 to Resteembot with the URL link you want to resteem in the memo. If you have a reputation of 49 you send 0.049 and so on.
I hope you enjoyed this noob overview on bots and how to use them. If you found this useful I certainly would appreciate your up-vote and/or follow! I am looking forward to connecting with you here on Steemit! Steem on!
This post was so much more informative than the video I watched the other day about bots. That guy only talked about the bid bots - I don't remember a word about flat rate bots. Not sure I'm up to this yet...but it's good to learn about. I took a few notes. Thanks for the straightforward info. Cheers
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Thank you so much! i am happy you found this helpful @orangina :)
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Yeah @emmyem84 is providing some great content here.
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Very good post ... Which Bot has the best Return on Investment ? @booster @boomerang @upme @echowhale @randowhale ?
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can't speak for any others but I just had some great ROI with boomerang on this post https://steemit.com/music/@rumble/spotify-ipo-valued-at-usd20-billion-plus-what-this-means-for-blockchain-music-dapps-like-peertracks-find-your-creative-freedom
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@offgridlife You really need to watch the bot tracker (steembottracker) to see if you are going to get a return on your investment at all. Most people bid so much that the return goes negative 9/10 times. Sometimes you can get a good return if you are lucky. Randowhale is a flat rate bot, you send one and get 2 in return. You have to check to see if hes awake though and he comes on randomly. Hope this helps!
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Yes thanks.
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Thank you @emmyem84! This is useful to share - I resteeemed and am already following ya.
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Thank you so much! I am very happy you found it useful!
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Thanks so much. Very informative post.
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Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read my post again @ronnyche!
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Hey awesome post, I remember a few weeks ago saying hey you should make a post about this and you seemed a little unsure about it, seems like you have things down pretty good. I actually follow your wallet to see what your investing in and then copy you lol
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Ok you made me laugh out loud! That is very flattering, haha. Yeah I have gotten the hang of it a little! Although it seems like when Ive learned everything there is something new to learn...so...yeah :D
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Thank you very much for the information. You pointed out important details This is a great post for newcomer like me. Thank your for sharing!
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Thanks for reading @vital888! I appreciate it!
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Great job in coming up with this guide.It is comprehensible and well written!
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Thank you so much for reading @fun2learn! I appreciate it :D
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About your comments here, very well laid and well thought out. What people really virtually always fail to factor in is the curation take off the top of the value of the post (25%) of which of course we often we assume we are going to see very little to none of that value. So if you are getting a 200% upvote with the 50/50 split payout, take the 50% off the top (curation payout) then you are left with a 25% loss, if return on investment is what you are seeking. The bid bots are terrible in the fact they are often pumped up at the last second as people that own the bots are shill bidding or the bidders at that point don't care and want to spend their money to promote their post. Which post promotion right now, is really the very best use for instant upvote bots, and bid bots. The funny thing is that this is already creating a trend on steemit that forces people to create organic relationships and use the bots more as a surefire expense and loss rather than a building block as it was used a few months ago. In my opinion, you need to maximize your curation returns if you can, and get into an efficient curation program, which fortunately I started one a few weeks ago on steem auto (cryptkeeper17) .
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Thanks so much @cryptkeeper17 for your comment! Yes I should have written about the 25% curation cut as well! It is important to keep that in mind when using these bot services. I never thought about the fact that the bid bot owners could be shill bidding at the last minute...thats horrible! I thought it was due to people not looking at the total amount of bids before bidding. I have only recently joined here a month ago, maybe the bid bots wont be used as much in the future once more people realize this?
I really don't know much about Steem auto, or curation trails. I will have to do a bit of research on that!
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It would be very wise for you because in looking at what you have done so far it's very organic, actually visiting with people on your blog posts, having thoughtful conversations and learning everything very quickly, impressive. I actually gave up on the bid bots about a month ago, they were exceptionally profitable a few months ago, now they are virtually worthless, again if you are chasing a profit as many of the calculations of the ROI is not quite correct sometimes. It's definitely trial and error, I am on discord cryptkeeper17#6637 if you would like I can tell you how I set mine up and possibly brainstorm some ideas at what you are trying to accomplish. I left you a treeplanter upvote for this post, I'm trying to save my voting power, it cratered here lately, lol, hope that's not a problem the article definitely warranted my vote. Great thoughts, thanks for the prompt response, keep up the great work!
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Thank you for your upvote! I am trying to do it organically even though I have used the bots, I appreciate your complement! I will definitely look into your curation trail and get in contact when I have a little time this week! I have never used discord either so I have to learn that too, lol. Thanks again!
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No problem thank you so much for the very quick response. Enjoy your weekend if there any questions let me know. I am going to get in depth on the nuances of steemauto in a post very soon this week because I am talking with so many people that don't quite understand it or the point of it. Then crazy thing is, is that how you organize yourself, the people voting with you is really the most important issue as the bid bots have become virtually worthless.
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Awesome, I am looking forward to your post! I will keep an eye out for it! Thanks so much for everything!
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You just planted 0.03 tree(s)!
Thanks to @cryptkeeper17
We have planted already 5863.06 trees
out of 1,000,000
Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 20598.42
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
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What is steem auto?
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It's a bot created within Steemit by a witness that helps you organize your voting automatically so that you can follow and upvote certain users you want, maximize your curation rewards on posts you vote for. It's a really nice way to organize a given percentage of your votes and develop guilds, depending on your preferences you set up. Customized automatic upvoting. Great question @hypnopreneur, let me know how well that answers the info you were wondering. Thanks again, always happy to help when I can!
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Thanks for the post. I have been wondering about using bots. I have a couple times in the past but just wasn't sure what I was doing really. Like you I am still not sure what I think about the use of bots, but I may continue to try and use them.
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Yeah I dont think the majority of people actually look at Steembottracker before they bid which causes all the bids to go negative in ROI. Glad you found this helpful! :)
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I am probably one of those people :-)
Sorry!
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Lol, so was I until a week ago 😂
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good stuff. I just smartmarket when I need it. I don't like bidding because I always loose. I also like to sell my votes via smartmarket if I'm not going to be voting that day.
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Yeah I really like smartmarket, definitely going to try to use the vote selling thing soon even though my votes not worth that much!
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Thx for the clear explanation!
When I did start to understand the bots my first opinion, which I’m still following, is to try to do it without bots. But they are so tempting to use.
Trying to skip the usage of them. I’m trying to build it with genuine comments and posting. Call me stupid but I do find the bots some kind of false play!
But to be honest I can’t promise that I will never use them!
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Yeah, I mainly use them as a psychological tool. You know when you go to a store and something seems too inexpensive? Like, there must be something wrong with it for the price to be so low...I think that posts with no upvotes have the same effect. People skip by reading them because there are no prior upvotes. Also, I like to use them sometimes to make myself feel better...even if its paid LOL, I know that sounds lame and horrible, but I just want to keep motivated to continue on here since its so time consuming.
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good point!
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I look at Steemit like a game. It basically calls it that in the white paper. So to me bots are like cheat codes. Depending on how you look at it that can make the game more fun. The point you are making about people passing over good content because it has low vote amounts is true. It is tough when you put a lot of work into a post only to have it disappear into obscurity. Using Bots is also like paying for advertisement.
It is cool you made this post. I just used my first service. It was https://steemit.com/@boomerang
I sent 4 SBD and received and upvote of 8 SBD. So I feel like that was an amazing ROI. I don't know if the results are always that great but it was pretty damn good to me. I used it for this post here
https://steemit.com/music/@rumble/spotify-ipo-valued-at-usd20-billion-plus-what-this-means-for-blockchain-music-dapps-like-peertracks-find-your-creative-freedom
I put a lot of hard work and time into that post and it would be a shame to me to see it go unnoticed.
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Hey! Yeah the bots are good if you can catch them before the bids get filled, if you can its great. Thats why you should look at Steem Bot tracker and see how many people are putting money in before you vote. Most of them go into the negative though so you are paying more than youll get back. just gotta watch it ;)
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It’s a new viewpoint for me. Like it! I do believe that the people first look at the rep. Never had the idea that they also would be influenced by the possible viewpoints. Thx the broaden my views.
Will come back when I do have enough voting power, went it little bit crazy today!
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I totally understand, dont worry about it! :) I drain my voting power almost everyday it seems
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As promised. Upvoted!
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So far I just use Minnowbooster and Smartmarket - I like how they basically upvote instantly. I had a try with the bid bots but didnt quite understand how they worked and was to impatient lol
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You cant lose with those! You will pretty much lose every time if you use the bid bots...unless you watch them at like 2 in the morning, lol!
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hahah yeah they have worked for me so far. I just dont like how Smartmarket gives you like 50 votes.. makes it more obvious youve used a bot, which some people look down on
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I have been experimenting with them, but still am not sure they are helping all that much. Will probably give them about another month and if I am still uncertain or see definitively they aren't helping much at all with being found I will quit using them. I don't mind losing just a little bit on them (which I do) if it increases being seem. But I am beginning to wonder how many people are really using trending/new/hot. I know I rarely do as I either see it in my feed or someone comments in something i am reading and I explore that way.
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I mentioned this in a above comment, its more psychological for me. If something has no votes or low vote value it can be deemed "not worthy" of reading and people might skip it, the same way you might not buy something because its too cheap. I dont really look at the trending section but I do scroll through the Hot section every couple hours. I find pretty good stuff in there. I hope that "Hivemind" helps with all of this. We shall see!
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I really can understand why so few use them (trending/hot/new). Trending is all whales for the most part (the same ones), hot sometimes has some good stuff but there is a lot of spillover from hot and with new everything scrolls off in 30 seconds or less.
Couple this with some of the cultural disconnect from people all over the world here and it skews the feeds bad. I think as time goes on more people will rely solely on people in their feeds or resteemed by those in their feeds. I think one edge that is serving you well and will continue to grow is bringing your husband, sister and some from your social circle on here. It multiplies your odds of being seen as you all feed energy to one another.
One last thought about visibility. Your merging your picture onto another is a good branding technique. I used it kind of in my writing, but I suck at that and you could always see the outline. I never could master photoshop and half assed it with Gimp.
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I actually do it all on my iphone! I use an app called "eraser" which is cheap $.99 maybe. The other tool I use then is a free one called "photo layer" which allows me to lay that one on top of any pic, I use the free attribute ones from unsplash.com and credit the photographer.
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nice tip here on eraser
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I think you had mentioned steemit posts showing up on google before? Was that you?
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Yes, I mentioned that on another post.
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Can you offer up any tips to make better use of that? Like how to title you post for better search results? Appreciate any help with this you can offer. I know payouts are only for 7 days but if a post you wrote months ago still brings people to your account then there is definitely benefits there
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I am not a Google expert, never used their analytics or anything. I am about to start writing my series on self publishing and when I get to marketing I will cover more of what I know regarding Google search.
The best tip I can give you right now without writing up a full post (which will be coming in the next month) is to experiment with what you would type into Google search. It isn't a guarantee you will get first page, but at least it will be something natural people would search for. Looking over your posts none of them I glanced at would ever be something someone would be likely to type into the search.
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Thanks for the tip and for taking to time reply. I will keep that in mind when making my posts.
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Extra vote included , @echowhale team swimming by with your upvotes
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Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
Curious? Read @resteembot's introduction post
Check out the great posts I already resteemed.
ResteemBot's Maker is Looking for Work.
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