Steemit is a platform with bots. A lot of bots. I don't like it but we all need to get used to this. In the future there will be bots everywhere and they will be smarter by the day. I am writing a series about all the bots I encounter on Steemit and try to explain how they work and what they are good (or bad) for. We begin with the bot I use the most: @booster.
What is @booster?
@booster is a paid-for-vote bot that will upvote any post you are requesting. Unlike the popular @randowhale bot it will not directly upvote. Instead you have a time window in which you can send a bet and hope that it will pay out in the end and you make a profit. That is not so easy and everyone who blindly sends money to @booster will probably get disappointed. This bot was created by @fyrstikken and @inertia, who you can find on the Discord SteemSpeak chat.
What makes @booster special?
First of all, @booster has a lot of voting power. As of the moment I am writing this article it has nearly 500k delegated Steem Power. That makes the 100% upvote worth about $72 with the current Steem Price of about $1.20. With a rising Steem price it will be much more.
Another feature is the voting window where every participant bids for a part of the next 100% upvote. It will at least take 2.4 hours before a new window closes and the upvoting process starts. The window closes when @booster has reached 100% voting power again. This is the actual beauty of the bot because it allows for high ROIs (Return of Investment) with a bit of luck.
Finally, what makes the real difference to all other paid-for-vote bots is the @frontrunner guild. It is a trail created by @fyrstikken to run BEFORE @booster. It is a group of people that will automatically upvote all boosted posts. The strength of the upvote depends on the amount you put into @booster although I couldn't really figure out how this is done. According to my own observations it doesn't really matter. Usually I make about $2-3 from the @frontrunner guild alone, before @booster has even showed up. If you want to join the frontrunner guild go to http://frontrunner.steemspeak.com.
How it works
Just like @randowhale you are simply sending any amount of Steem or Steem Dollars to @booster and put the URL of the post you want to be upvoted in the memo. Shortly after you did that, the @frontrunner guild will upvote your post. @booster itself will show up at the end of the current time window, which is usually about 2.4 hours. @booster will always upvote you with a percentage of the next 100% upvote depending on all the other bids. If anything goes wrong you will automatically get refunded by the bot.
Example:
@Axe & @Bob both bid for the same voting batch. If @Axe bids 4 SBD and @Bob bids 2 SBD, @Axe will get 66.66% and @Bob 33% etc.
Since the 100% vote from @booster is worth about $72 you can calculate when it is a good time to bid and make a profit and when it is a terrible idea to bid because the pool has already grown too high. You must include the ~25% reward for your curators in that calculation. So in order to make a profit when you bid $1 you must get an upvote of at least $1.25 to break even.
Here you see one lucky attempt with a high $13.3 bid of mine. The first slide of the GIF shows before, the second shows the result of the frontrunners (which varies every time so don't count on a specific amount here) and the third slide shows the final result after getting a great time window.
How to Master @booster
So far so good. Most people understand this concept until here. If you want to make a profit you have to go deeper than that. I have two crucial advices for you:
1. Don't bid too high
@booster works best for all the lower you bid. When 10 people bid just $1 they all get an upvote worth $7.2 with the current price and all. That is amazing. But it usually NEVER happens because people are greedy. So instead of bitting low they want to grab as much of the 100% vote as possible. They bid up to $30 and ruin it for everyone else.
Even if they keep the pool below $72 it will not be very profitable anymore for everyone, including particularly the person with the high bid. The ROI percentage is the same for everyone but the higher you bet the more $$ you will loose. My advice to everyone who is NOT monitoring the bids is to keep the bids low. I think $5 should be the absolute maximum for someone not putting in any more effort.
2. Monitor the bids for maximum profit
Only if you track the bids of the current window you can be sure how much is already in the pool and how much you want for yourself. Wait until the end of the time window. You can use https://www.steemnow.com/ for that because it refreshes the power automatically. When @booster reaches 99.8% it is time to make your bid. Of course you can wait longer but it I have missed rounds quite often when I did. You can use http://steem.cool/booster/ (very buggy, ignore all info but the "total invested by users" and even that is not entirely accurate because refunds sometimes confuse the calculation) or you use https://steemd.com/@booster/ and calculate it yourself. A new window starts after the last @booster upvote.
When the pool is low, for example $20 then it is a jackpot: Now you can easily invest a higher bid and get a great ROI. Please keep in mind that you are playing with others here. So don't be to greedy. I think $10-20 is fine in that situation. Everyone will get a great upvote for their money. If the pool is at $40 you will still make profit but you should consider a much smaller bid, for example $5-10. If the pool is at $54 I wouldn't make any bids whatsoever because it is just not profitable anymore (@booster alone, with the @frontrunner bonus you can actually calculate higher - but you shouldn't!).
Here is an example with a good and a bad pool. As you can see the difference is very little: While the first pool is at $51 and will make a profit, the second pool is at $60 and will make a loss. Even with the frontrunners the second pool was a bad investment for me.
Source: http://steem.cool/booster/
Why should you care about the others?
If you just vote greedy than you will surely make losses. Even if you monitor @booster and you see that at 99.8% it has a low pool, others might do the same right now. If three people think like you and bid $20 in that moment (which happens all the time), the pool shoots up to an unprofitable amount and EVERYONE looses. But you are loosing the most because your percentual loss hurts more than from a person with a $1 bid.
So the best strategy is monitoring and not being greedy (I admit, I have been greedy quite often and sometimes I got lucky and sometimes I ruined everything). Don't be that guy that is always putting in $10-20 without checking or anything. The thing is that it is usually always profitable when you bid low thanks to the @fruntrunner guild. Even if the pool grows to high, with a $1 bid you will most likely make a nice profit. That is not the case for a $10 bid at all.
I am not happy about the situation on Steemit. But it is what it is and we all want to make the best out of the situation we have. Make sure to play the game right and don't just focus on yourself and your own gains.