I always wanted to make a voting bot, but never did before on Steemit.

I would like to think I am pretty much the average demographic for this site. Smart enough to know what is going on, but not motivated enough to make custom tools to make the most economic advantage of it. I have so much fun posting here, I just never really was motivated enough to try and optimize my holdings for anything else.

That was, until I saw this post from @cryptomancer about his trials and tribulations buying a bot service and making business out of it.

I did some more digging and saw that everything was on the level and thought I would try it out.

And, I wasn't disappointed.

I more than doubled my previous high marks for curation rewards in any given week. For instance, this is a screen grab from just one month ago:

In contrast, I just pulled this one, just 10 minutes ago:

So, It looks great, right?

Well, it did not come without quite the learning curve. I started out my little experiment by putting on authors that always get in the top 20 trending plus people I always follow. After just one day, I logged into Steemstats and came into this monstrosity:

It was so obvious, but I never really understood. A lot of the people that are always on trending tend to post many times per day. Setting automated rules just for the best authors is not an optimal strategy.

Furthermore, I noticed something else. Take a look at the following actual curation rewards below, earned by my Steem Voter enrollment these past few weeks:

You might be surprised to find out that the middle, where I earned 0.133 SP, is the account with the least amount of followers of the three. It just so happens that particular account is the one I have been following since I have been on Steemit.

This reality, it turns out, has been the most constant thread of my Steem Voter experience.

So, it's safe to say I've reconsidered my voting bot strategy. Instead of trying to make a profit, I'm just targeting votes for people I would have voted for anyways.

Consider this as an example:

This is just an alphabetically organized example of the people I have normally been following but have never really had a chance to upvote until I was actually active and browsing Steemit on my phone. There are many more I have created the same rules for that also fit the bill.

So, the reality is this:

Steem Voter is awful easy to use, and has high financial rewards. However, I have found those rewards only come if you have the same mindset as your other actions on Steemit. In other words, be genuine, vote for authors you would normally vote for but never have the time otherwise to to.

And, as modest as the profits might be, it has been so validating to know that my normal voting behaviors were actually fairly optimal. I just could not pursue them enough because I did not have enough active hours here.

So, if anything else, I would encourage my fellow Steemians to enroll in Steem Voter to reward their favorite authors.

After all, isn't that what we are all here for?

Lead image courtesy of steemwhales.com