I Wouldn't Mind $1000+ Payouts...
But I don't buy votes for 100's of SBDs. When I've used bid bots, which I haven't been doing lately, I've always paid a few SBDs at the most. And I do that because I don't want to ruin the chance for others... And still increase my own rewards!
I would never accept payouts of several thousand dollars per day. I would stop to publish multiple posts if I ever earned that much, because greed is bad and this type of behaviour will hurt the growth of Steemit and ultimately crush the entire community.
Listen up...
I am just a "nobody" and I definitely don't speak for all the "nobodies" on Steemit. I speak only for myself and even though I don't participate in flag wars and try my best to stay away from discussions which potentially could hurt myself in any way or affect other "nobodies", there's a limit to how much one can take without doing something.
This Is My Personal Thoughts And Feelings...
I earn just a few dollars and cents. I don't have regular whale-support and I don't have a handful of powerful dolphins supporting everything I write. I don't have 100+ payouts on a daily basis. In fact, I haven't earned 100+ in months. - Still, I'm here trying to describe and tell you my story. My approach and my perspective on these things. Even though they might not matter for most of you.
Bid Bots Are Bad.
I believe that the idea that brought life to bid bots was good. I also believe that it was helpful and that it has made it possible for minnows and authors without much recognition to increase the earnings. - That is a good thing.
However, when we have literally 50 different bots to use and maximum bids of 100 SBD/Steem... - The bots ruin the whole concept as only people who can afford to use the services will reap all the rewards. This hurts our whole community because most people on Steemit are not rich, wealthy or heavily invested.
This ultimately means that the rich will be richer and the poor will still be poor. - Bid bots gave the little guys a chance for starters, but greed has ruined all of that.
I am trying to make $3000 USD.
And I am grateful for each cent I make on Steemit. I am thankful for all the support and I love the opportunity I have been given. The 3000 USD I'm striving for will change my entire life. To some extent.
I am trying to earn this amount to pay back a debt so I will be eligible new student loans, for an upcoming education. I want to focus on teenagers who suffers from mental illness and I want to heal the world for a little bit. That is my goal.
With that being said
When Steem and SBD are worth this much it would take only 400-500 Steem/SBD in total to accomplish this. And truth to be told, if I bought votes for 50, 75 or 100, it wouldn't take more than just a handful of posts to reach this.
- I still don't do it.
And I will not do this, because I don't want to ruin the chance for others. You see, even though the max bids might be 100, you will affect everyone in the bid rounds when you send large amounts like this, and that is bad. Bad for the entire community. I'm not even talking about reward pool rape. I am talking about other people and common sense.
If we want Steemit to flourish and grow, we need to help others to grow. While we're doing that, we empower ourselves and earn curation rewards. - That's a win/win for all of us.
If we feed on all the minnows and active authors without rewarding them, these people will eventually quit and that will ruin Steemit. - None of us wants that to happen.
Bid Bots GAVE Us A Chance To HELP Steemit.
But due to greed and users who doesn't care about anything besides themselves, bid bots have become bad for the community and we're at the edge of being doomed.
- Laugh all you want.
I don't claim myself to be an expert but I know what I see. Even though I'm just a random "nobody" on Steemit, I can still see that Steemit is going downhill. It doesn't matter how many new Steemians we're getting each day. It doesn't matter if we get thousands of new people signing up and have hundreds of new articles published each second.
We have to take care of the ones who are already here, before they leave.
Instead of buying votes for 100's of dollars on your own content. Why not spend the same amount rewarding 100 other Steemians who cannot afford to buy these votes?
- Because we are selfish. We have become selfish.
When @randowhale launched we could see many authors who bought votes for others. We did that in an attempt to give others motivation and reward them with more than what our own votes were worth. Nowadays, we have people spending 100's of dollars to buy votes only to reward themselves in a selfish way.
Don't get me wrong here. It's not your fault. "Everyone" is doing the same.
I've bought votes too. But I've only bought votes for a few dollars each time. To increase my rewards a little bit. I don't want to blame bid bots either, but due to some authors greed and selfishness, we have come to what we have today.
A struggle to get the most rewards out of each bid bot. On each post we make... And the rich reward themselves to the expense on others.
Minnow #1 and minnow #2 buy votes for 1 sbd/steem and are truly satisfied and enjoy the votes they get to increase the rewards with 2 and 2,50... - And here comes rich guy #3 and spend 100 for a vote.
- What happens?
Minnow #1 and #2 won't even be able to earn back their investment... Meanwhile rich guy #3 will take everything. I guess that might be okay one time. But two, three or 11 times?
The minnows will stop to use the bid bots because they will see that they lose money or that there's literally no reason for them to use them... And the rich guys will continue to make even more on everything they publish.
Don't Feed On Minnows And The Little Guys...
Back in the day, whales could easily change a persons day, week or month with one single upvote... And heavily invested people did this on a daily basis. - That was inspiring. That was encouraging.
- That brought people to Steemit.
Much have changed since those days. And even though we still have whales doing what they did in the past, most people on Steemit in general are doing everything they can, to make themselves even richer. Without thinking of the little guys.
- And such behaviour will destroy Steemit.
The next time you're about to send a max bid to 11 bots...
Please take a look at the other vote-buyers in that round.
- Are you seriously so selfish that you don't care about them at all?
So even though I am not against bid bots or the concept behind them... I am against how people use them to only enrich themselves without thinking about how it will affect other people.
My main use for them is as you said, to get some earnings as a minnow and to grow my account. I got unlucky last night when that guy put 100SBD on like 6 different bots at once, did mine at the same time and didn't quite double my value.
But getting people liking your content and making a few $ a post, just from that, that's always a great feeling. Even better if you get someone with a higher up vote and you know you earned it.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That sad part is that he's not the only one doing this. This happens on a daily basis. Many authors are doing the exact same thing. Only to empower themselves because they can "afford" it.
However, they cannot afford to ruin Steemit... But they're too ignorant or selfish to see that they're contributing to the end of Steemit. In a more rapid way than they can imagine.
But they're also not the ones to blame, as "everyone" is doing this. But it takes only one person to change the behaviour of everyone. As long as it's someone with enough credibility and reputation.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I generally on some bots can get a triple+ return value, even with only a few SBD put on. But I stopped for a few weeks when a lot were always putting on 15SBD +
But I am only using it now and then, withdrawing some out to secure savings and get things I need atm, but I still like to put some back into Steemit for curators etc.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
A max bid of $5 or whatever would stop this behaviour and ultimately even out the playfield for everyone.
That would also allow many authors to increase the rewards a little bit, instead of just a handful on each bidding round. - But I guess that'll never happen.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah, and we are the 'ignorant assholes' for pointing this out to him!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah, it's very unfortunate actually. He's doing what "everyone else" does, and he tried to defend his actions. However, I don't blame them for doing what they do. I just want them to think of others instead of themselves... Because that's how we will grow the community.
Making hundreds or thousands of SBDs right now is incredible and obviously amazing as it's worth ~7 times that... But that's also short term thinking.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Very much so and this was my main point I was trying to get across yesterday.
Not understanding (or pretending not to) that these massive votes blow everyone else away in the round by saying 'it doesn't affect other users' is very poor imo.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Probably the best defence. It's like saying "others do it too". But that doesn't justify the things you do. It just means that you are doing what others does.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Hi - I've dabbled (briefly) with bid bots, and just feel dirty having used them. I personally think they have no place whatsoever on steemit.
They give a completely misleading impression to newcomers about the value of their posts. I've in fact unfollowed quite a few people recently just because they use them, and give me an unrealistic idea of the value of their posts.
Not that it's all about the money of course, but it is part of being here.. I'm much like you I just want to earn a reasonable second income from the platform by sharing my slightly quirky views on social issues.
BTW, you sound like you've got something of a sociological brain on you, I'll keep an eye out for future posts, just try and blinker yourself to all of the shite on here.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I agree with you about the misleading impression part. But I've also realized that bid bots are here to stay and I also believe that newcomers will understand if and when a bid bot is being used to reward articles. At least sooner or later.
One of the saddest parts is the trending pages in my opinion. Articles reaching the trending pages just based on paid votes. That's ridiculous and plain stupid as those articles will reap much more rewards just for reaching the trending pages. I mean, even a vote worth 0.01 will bring you a ton of rewards in total if you get 1000 upvotes worth 0.01.
That's the first time I've heard that and I appreciate it. I'm just glad that I can write decent enough so others understand what I'm trying to say. :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes I do find those trending pages annoying, thankfully if I stick to my feed I can blinker myself to them. My life is very much improved in quality without bot user extraordinaire @joeparys (for example) in my face.
It certainly can't have a positive affect on the appalling attrition rate of this platform. And that's a lose-lose situation for all of us.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
We have authors making ~10 posts per day, and use bid bots to reap rewards on all of them.. And that's not good. I don't mind if someone use a bid bot on a few posts and with a reasonable amount of money. But spending 100 sbd on votes from several bots on the same article is nuts and bad for the community.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
No it's not! Although thankfully I'm oblivious to that extreme abuse. I'm going to write something about this later today.... I was inspired into a suitable analogy after my gym session yesterday.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I agree. I will admit to self voting but I try to split my votes 50/50, 50% with other people, and then 50% to my unnoticed posts. I just find it difficult to see an hours work only get $0.01 reward so I like to boost them just to make me feel a bit better.
If you were earning $1000 per post and you put it all into steem power that would give you a great opportunity to reward others. I do wonder if self voting on comments was eliminated would that result in a better share of the reward pool going to decent authors? I don't know the answer.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This is not about self-voting though. This has been discussed many times before and there's actually no right or wrong. Steemit even encourage you to upvote your own posts as the default settings are to upvote your post when you publish a new article.
I personally recommend self-voting. Especially if you're anything but a heavily invested whale or dolphin. That's literally the only way you can make sure that you'll earn something.
However, I do not recommend self-voting comments and articles if you're a whale, as that will rape the reward pool. We've seen this many times too, and this still occurs.
I never upvote my own comments but I always upvote my own articles. I also try to upvote my articles after 30 minutes, so it will benefit the earlier curators a little bit more.
If one took away votes on comments, the reward pool would be raped by other means. By poor quality articles being published and so on. - Which we already can see today.
So I think it comes down to people's mindsets. People are "in it to win it", but many of them are having short term goals and are being selfish. - And I truly believe that such behaviour will destroy Steemit.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks for the explanation. I'm sure that in time those that are developing the platform will listen to feedback and respond. Nobody wants to see it fail and even those whales that are greedy would prefer to play a fairer game and reap some rewards than destroy their own golden goose.
Personally I'm hoping that the platform will develop and improve over time offering an improved user experience as well as a fairer system. Don't get me wrong, it's already excellent, but I think it will continue to get better.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I am sure Steemit will improve. I would just prefer if changes happened more often, as it seems that we're waiting for a fix or a solution to many things for a long period of time before we see any response.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Good content creator and good people like you need to use the bid bot as much as possible because bid bot farms never stop.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thank you very much for your nice comment teamsteem, I appreciate it as always and I might need to re-think my own strategy a little bit.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Bidbots could be a force for good - no need to be a starving artist anymore and everyone has the opportunity to earn a decent income... in theory.
Sadly, when there's money involved, there'll be tons of scams and spam.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah, it's awesome in theory... But the reality is a whole other thing.
Like I've said in other comments here too. A maximum bid of $5 or whatever would even out the playfield for everyone and to disable articles with paid votes to be visible on the trending pages would reduce some of the extra benefits too. - But I don't think that'll ever happen.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Indeed, those 2 changes would go a long way to fixing the system. I think blacklists / weekly voter caps could help as well.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
True. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what'll happen.. But I wouldn't bet on any major changes unfortunately.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
It's a really messed up situation. Ideally, I'd love if the system could be tweaked so the incentive wouldn't be there to do unfair stuff.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah... Would be great to see some changes.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Oh now I understand why I don't get better return with the bots. I used it before when I was new, but not anymore.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This happens on more or less every bid round, so it might definitely have been the reason for you to not get as good ROI as expected.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I man with you brother, i have seen this act of despiracy and i feel so sad when all people want is to get on the trending page with $thousands as payout without even thinking about the rest of the community...Bid Bots is Doomsday if not checked pretty soon!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
They not only reach the trending pages due to the votes they buy. They also reap tons of rewards due to the fact that they are trending. They get more exposure, gain more followers and get more upvotes for being on trending... So one thing you could do, is to not make articles with paid votes eligible the trending page.
But I guess that's pretty hard to implement.
However, such thing would at least reduce the benefits of being on the trending page.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That is a great idea if you ask me, paid votes should be disallowed from Trending page...Hopefully, someone up there see this or some witness at least.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah, I don't even know it that is possible, but it would definitely help to reduce some of the benefits from the bid bots.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Words out of my head really. And the bad part is they drop the hundreds on multiple bots during the last few minutes. Bam, most rewards are theirs. Ah well. I suppose that's just how it is. Too bad. Newcomers would come in troves but if the big ones continue to eat all the hatchlings, they're bound to leave for better seas. And that would be bad for Steemit.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Exactly my point!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I joined Steemit because of the possibility of earning from writing if I could create content that people valued.
I'm not tech savvy and I don't understand what bots are or how they work but that they enable content creators to buy votes to boost their own work is, frankly, a form of corruption.
It is an abuse of value, the genuine value of posts as voted by Steemians. It undermines the integrity of the platform.
Integrity feeds trust. Communities depend on trust if they are to grow. Trust feeds on accountability and fairness. Greed destroys trust. Greed destroys communities.
I'm a newbie who's trying to figure out how Steemit works. The little I've seen so far is, mostly, incredible and inspiring. There are amazing communities being set up here that are going to have far reaching impact on the world as we know it.
It would be a shame if this amazing platform is allowed to disintegrate because of a few people's greed.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
And that's worries me in terms of Steemit. When these so called "rich guys" spend 100's of sbds to buy votes, they reap most of the rewards from the bots.
They would only make the bid bots stronger and compete against other "rich guys" for the money. By bidding more and more. - Ultimately, we would have extremely wealthy and powerful bots, rich people still being rich and poor people would leave.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I have never used bid bots or any automated bot for that matter. I believe in honest writing and curating. Somehow using the bots takes away from that. I personally don't want to spend a couple of hours researching and writing a post only to have no one read it but be upvoted by a bot.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I can totally understand what you mean, but many authors are using bid bots to get that extra boost of exposure and to build their reputation. Sure, some extra rewards comes with that too, which obviously is a huge bonus, but when people start to buy votes for 100 to take all the rewards themselves.. Well, that's when we have a problem.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This is a hand full of knowledge and educative post @hitmeasap
It is heart breaking when you see some posts earning big and even in trending that on a normal ground can only earn cents all because of different bots that have been used to boost them. If really steemit is a community that welcome good and original content why can't we just allow people to be rewarded based on the good content they created and not using bot to upvote their vote or better still a bid shouldn't be more than 20 SBD/Steem.
Regards @funkylove
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Well, I still don't think that bid bots are bad in all honesty. I just believe that people have started to use them wrong. I would much rather see a bid bot having a maximum bid of 5. That way, the playfield would be more even and many authors would be able to increase the earnings a little bit.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes indeed.
I take it you observed yesterday's trending. I managed to get called an 'ignorant asshole' in the comments, result!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I've seen this for a long time, but yeah, I saw what you're referring too. That was partly the reason for this article.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yep, bots are going to take over and destroy steemit I f ear. What makes steemit special is the human interaction but there are bots that vote - no one reads that post but it gets a fat upvote with NO ONE actually reading to see if the content is worthwhile.
On the bright side, there are a LOT of people here who see what is happening. Pretty soon a new site with all the wonderful things steemit started will pop up, minus the bots that are ruining this platform.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah.. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what'll happen. I just don't want others to be this ignorant and selfish, because it's a nasty behaviour.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I like this article and it's so true. There is so much greed in the world.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes it is! I'm glad you liked this.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Beautiful and Well written, Thanks for sharing @hitmeasap
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thank you!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
So touched by this post, because am a newbie people dont even get to read my post, neither do they upvote😖
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
It's a struggle. It all comes down to hard work, effort and some luck. I wish you the best of luck!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks, i will keep trying and not get discouraged!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That's the spirit! :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah🙋
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Good post
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
you can check my profile give comment & upvote
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I don't encourage, recommend or participate in follow for follow or upvote for upvote type of deals. It takes more than that to get my attention. Thanks though.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
well mr @hitmeasap
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Nice post
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thank you.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thank you @hitmeasap for making a transfer to me for an upvote of 2.44% on this post! Half of your bid goes to @budgets which funds growth projects for Steem like our top 25 posts on Steem! The other half helps holders of Steem power earn about 60% APR on a delegation to me! For help, will you please visit https://jerrybanfield.com/contact/ because I check my discord server daily? To learn more about Steem, will you please use http://steem.guide/ because this URL forwards to my most recently updated complete Steem tutorial?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit