 | Lately I've spent number of hours trying to learn as much as possible about this very sensitive topic: STEEMIT BOTS. |
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INTRODUCTION
My goal was to find out if bots are indeed:
Profitable
How can we use them to maximize our benefits
Mostly I wanted to know what is the steemit's community approach towards bots in general
Some of you may already know @yabapmatt as he is behind very well know site (steembottracker.com). He clearly is very positive and encouraging towards using bots as one of very few ways for beginners (so called minnows) to get some traffic into their blog.
"I am a big proponent and user of the various paid voting bots and services on the Steem platform. I think they provide a great service to minnows and new users by allowing us to get our posts out there and seen by more people and build our following."
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@yabapmatt/introducing-the-steem-upvote-bot-tracker
From my personal experience it's pretty much not possible ever to hit a trending page without using bots. Most population of steemit users seem to be accepting the fact that bot's are a part of this platform and they are here to stay. But there are also many of those who are highly against bots usage and it's best to stay out of their radar.
@bloodviolet created a very informative post trying to answer one very simple question: "Voting bots - Good or Bad?"
https://steemit.com/steemit/@bloodviolet/voting-bots-good-or-bad
Conclusion is very strong:
"every big account used a bot at one point in time, especially in the beginning, and a decent percentage of accounts, even those with more then 100,000 followers, still use bots to increase their likes and comments. "
The truth is that amount of users using bots are only increasing. Which brings me to another big question:
ARE USING BOTS EVEN PROFITABLE?
Currently with very low price of SBD and STEEM using bots seem to be very unprofitable. At least that's my experience.
And what is the value of SBD? Will it increase? Let's say that SBD will be worth 10usd? @gmichelbkk has been trying to answer similar question some time ago.
He wrote once:
"Now that 1 SBD is valued at $10.82, would you like to know if using Steem upvote bots is still profitable? "
It may be worth checking out:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@gmichelbkk/is-it-still-profitable-to-bid-for-steem-upvote-bots
I would also like you to check out @earthnation, who created lately very valuable post: "The Best and Most Profitable Bots on Steemit. 1/18/2018":
https://steemit.com/steem/@earthnation/the-best-and-most-profitable-bots-on-steemit-1-18-2018
In my honest opinion, it's already very hard to make any profit on using bots. The demand is quite high and supply isn't that huge. We all need to learn to post during peak hours but to use bots outside those peak hours? Sunday from my experience is always the best as amount of other bidders isn't as high as any other day.
I can hardly imagine how much harder things might get for bot users once the price of Bitcoin will increase and the value of SBD will also be much higher.
WHAT'S MY PERSONAL VIEW ON BOTS?
I found it really hard to profit alone on the usage of bots. With the current low value of STEEM and SBD it's hard to break even. It's hardly worth the time that will be wasted. But we should not focus on earning rewards for ourselfs!
Today i would like everyone to change their point of view for a moment. Stop and look around. You will realize quickly that it is important to help your curators grow. There are many people out there who spent hours building engagement with others and receiving curation rewards. And they will very often be focusing on upvoting accounts with solid reward pool.
To put it simple: If you want people to auto-vote you, then you need to make sure that your rewards will be worth it. Use bots mostly to support your followers. And they will become very "loyal".
 | How to do that? It's pretty simple:  Self-vote and use bots only 1 day after you publish your post. Give curators chance to upvote your post and just then use all possible resources to pump your paycheck. This way you will benefit your curators the most. |
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After all we're all "in it together". It's hard to become succesful on steemit as an individual. We all need to build and support community around us if we want to achieve any goals at all.
CONCLUSIONS
I quickly realized that Steemit is allowing me to target my audience very efficiently which allows me to get to know right people. But at the same time, the rewards system for being a curator is a joke. We end up looking for accounts like "haejin" to auto-vote them.
It's very tempting to spend enough money on bots to boost your post until it will reach the trending page. I did it once and I got maybe 30-50 new followers, but almost no one new commented my post. So was it worth it?
The answer is: not really. Mostly because I attracted the attention of some whale who downvoted me right away. I spoke to him later on and it turned out that there is strong community of whales playing a "steemit police" who tend to downvote trening posts if they noticed that bots were used to boost an article. Hell, I will stay away from trending page for as long as possible. Now I know it's not worth to get their attention.
It is very important for you guys to remember that lesson. Avoid trending page if you want to stay out of "steem-whales-police" radar.
Why I care about your opinion?
To tell you the truth, I dont care much about what other "whales" think. I know that I will never be able to please everyone. There will be always be someone out there who disagrees with me.
But at the same time I care about those who engage with my posts. I want to know what my followers think. At the end of the day, I worked very hard to build a solid follower base of people sharing similar interests and I would love to know what your view on bots are. Do you agree with my approach towards them? Please let me know.
In addition;
Let me quote 2 of my steemit collegues:
"I believe that in order to have a certain success on steemit you have two main strategies: Either you use bid-bots like a madman or you really bring people together and interact." - @achim03
"Is a big whale vote on a shitty post just as bad as a vote bot vote on a shitty post. If I don't have a whale friend and I make nice posts and want the world to see it... is a vote bot a bad thing? Is the vote bot the problem or the greed? " - @allcapsonezero
I hope to hear your thoughts, mostly about the part of "what's my view on bots?". It really matters to me to know what is your opinion on that subject. Subject that clearly divided STEEMIT like nothing else did.
Cheers
Piotr
