First, the good:
- For users with insufficient amount of steem-power such as myself, paying for a vote allows to generate income off a post, since there is this 0.02$ lower limit on author rewards.
Self votes allows increased rewards when added to the bought vote (frontrunning it out of insider's knowledge) - It allows to receive increased curation without committing to Steem by purchasing it and locking it as Steem-Power.
- It does not handicap one by self restriction to free votes, since bought votes became so common, that not using them allows others an even greater return for their money, due to less competition on voting power.
The above is supposed to be true, but not so much due to the below:
- Most Owners of the upvote bots used them to vote on their own content, and for them the votes are free, due to all income received by their own bot being eventually paid back to them.
- Some owners stipulate additional restrictions on the expiration date of content, the type of the content, etc. with their "no refund" guarantee, or plainly just acted upon.
- Some owners even miss on votes, and either skip refunding entirely, or hope for their users to forget about it.
- Some owners change their rules, such as the minimal fee retroactively, or on a very short notice, and some of these give no refund even after confrontation with the issue.
So if you do choose to use the upvote bots, take the bad into account too.