Quite often my time on Steemit is sporadic. I do vote manually when I'm on, but if I only voted manually my Voting Power would sit at 100% for longer than I'd like when I can't get on. I also have people who I want to support and enjoy reading their work, but sometimes I don't get around to it until the upvote window has gone. So I make use of auto voters.
Steemauto is a more recent auto voter created by @mahdiyari which is also hosts curation trails, combining what Steemvoter and Streemian did separately. I believe Streemian is now no longer in operation, leaving Steemauto as the only option for curation trails. Steemvoter is still in operation and I use that for votes that I want to go out, no matter what the percentage of my VP is as they don't have an option to restrict votes going out.
Signing up for Steemauto is straight forward and just requires your active key via Steem Connect. Steem Connect keeps your pass keys safe while allowing permission for Steemauto to use it for whatever functions you want to use. Steemauto does not get your password. Always make sure you are definitely on Steem Connect before entering any passwords.
Once signed up and signed in you will see a warning at the top of the dashboard page:
So let's walk through the options so that we know what we're doing.
To set up auto upvotes for Steemians you want to support select “fanbase”. It's fairly straight forward, the creator gives you an example. Enter the username without “@” and “follow”.
If all goes well then in the top right corner a green message will drop down briefly to say that the user was successfully added. If the request failed then a red message will appear instead to let you know that it was unsuccessful. If you didn't enter the username correctly it will let you know that the username doesn't exist.
Once added you can go into settings and make some adjustments.
The default setting is for the upvote to be 100% as soon as the blog is posted and up to 5 upvotes for that user per day. This can be changed to suit your purposes. For example you might want to have the vote come in at 20-30 minutes to have a chance at curation rewards and you might only want to upvote one post per user per day to stop one author eating up all your voting power.
Speaking of voting power, you can set a limit so that auto voting will stop if your VP goes below a certain percentage. You can edit this on the main page near the bottom left:
You can auto upvote up to two comments of a user by selecting "upvote comments". This is pretty straight forward, just like upvoting authors. As the other selections show, you can schedule posts to be posted at a certain time and you can have steemauto claim your rewards automatically for you.
You may also have noticed that the red button at the bottom takes away authorisation from Steemauto to use your pass keys if you wish to leave. The yellow "settings" button at the top defaults back to the dashboard page so doesn't do anything on this page.
The first of the blue buttons is for curation trails. You can choose from a list of curation trails or search for one to follow.
Once you've followed you can alter the settings to suit. Leaving the default setting at 0 means you will upvote directly after the trailer, in this example @centerlink. Scaled voting weight means you'll vote at a percentage of the trailer. For example if @centerlink votes at 10% VP and my vote is set a 50% I will vote at half 10% which will be 5%. A fixed voting weight means you will upvote at a level you choose directly; so If you set it at 50% your vote weight will be 50%.
Steemauto is a free service provided by witness @mahdiyari, but hosting it costs $250-$300 per month. So any liquid funds from this post will be donated to @steemauto to help with those costs.