Today I'd like to show you how I select my upvoting bots, which ones are my favorites, and how I use them to put my bid for optimal results with the help of a very useful website.
There are many people that I see complaining on Steemit saying that they received a vote of lower value than the bid they have sent to the bot. It is just how bidding works because each bot has only a certain total vote value and the more people bid, the less everyone receives.
How I Use Voting Bots!
The website I have been using since I started using bots is SteemBotTracker.com.
There are many sections in this website that you can look at to help you bid with bots, but I'm going to show you the "Bid-Based Voting Bots" section that I use.
In all the following images I highlighted in green my favorite bots that I use very often and in yellow, the bots that I use as a second choice. That does not mean that the other bots are not good, it is just my choice and my experience not having had any issue sending them hundreds of transactions.
The first thing to look at for your selection is the "Max Post Age" column and select a bot that has a maximum set at 3.5 days. This is just because there is some whale calling himself "Grumpy Cat" who will downvote posts at random that have used a bot which is over the 3.5 days limit. This is totally unfair, but when you have a lot of Steem Power, it's fun to scare the little fish.
Bots over this 3.5 days limit are also good and it's all a matter of how much you want to risk using them. For some minnows, receiving one of these downvotes can be the end. So, that's why I am advising to use only bots that respect this limit, until another whale decides to impose a one day only maximum age to show their power.
This is the whole list of bots available and these stats are real time.
My favorite bots:
My second choice:
Again, other bots may be as good, it's just that I haven't used them.
Now, in order to help you select your bot, you may want to use the filter.
Clicking on this icon will show the bots that give part of their income back to the Steem community and it's a good idea to support them.
Using other bots, you don't know where the money go and it might just help the bot owner get richer.
The little $ sign is for bots that have automatic refunds if your vote doesn't go through, or if you make a mistake with your URL, for example. That's a good idea to use these bots as chasing a refund is the last thing you want to do.
Look at the "Min Bid" column carefully so you always send the minimum bid or more. I made the mistake myself a couple of times to send only 2 SBD when the minimum is 3 SBD. You get a refund, but you have to rebid again and this delay your vote.
You can also play with the "Vote Value" slider, which will reduce the number of results to your requirement.
Now, how do you get a bid that will return the best possible value for your upvote?
The first thing to do is to pay attention at the "Max Suggested Bid" column. If you want to make a 5 SBD bid, do not use a bot that doesn't have 5 SBD or more left. All the entries highlighted in red are all at 0.00, which means that it is too late to use them.
This is why lots of people get back less than what they bid, because they blindly bid 5 SBD or more when the bot is already at zero! This has for effect to reduce everyone's vote value and if everyone would monitor the bot with this website and stop bidding before it's at zero, then everyone would profit.
Then, you have the "Last Vote" and "Next Vote" column, bots ready to vote at the top.
What you can do to check if it's still profitable to use a bot is to click on the "Details" button.
The first tab shows you the "Current Round" and you can see the expected ROI at this particular moment in time.
You can see that it is still a good deal to use this bot as there is plenty of room for more bids. The 1 SBD bids get a 8.34% upvote for a value of $24.33, which is very good, but as more bids are coming in these values will decrease.
Let's look at the "Last Round" tab now.
As you can see, the ROI is negative -8.73% and this is something you can't predict.
Is that the fault of the bot?
No, it's the fault of users continuing to bid when they should have stopped. You see that at the end a 1 SBD bid is only worth 1.48% for a vote value of $4.32.
It is just like when you are in an auction and bid on something to buy. Everyone pushes the price of the item higher and higher, which makes the deal not so sweet for the bid winner.
For the bots, as more and more people are bidding, pushing limits, bidders receive back less and less.
So, what is the best strategy?
I personally look at all the things I just showed you and I would bid when it seems still profitable. Some people like to bid at the last minute and this has for effect to reduce the returns for everyone unfortunately. There are certain hours of the day when there is too much competition and bidding at another time is best.
Finally, I do not want to spend hours monitoring these bots and sometimes I'm a bit in the negative, but I have mostly been in the positive. The reason I use bots is to get more visibility, not profit.
I hope this post is useful for you, so you can understand how bots work and use them to your benefit.
Would you upvote this post and follow me for more because this will encourage me to write more posts like this one?
Would you please help @jerrybanfield become a top 20 witness because you can help funding projects to build Steem as explained here? Vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Read the 5 reasons why I'm voting for Jerry Banfield as a witness and how to vote in my post.
Michel Gerard