Here is my down and dirty stance on it.
Music, IRL, does not exist without capital powering it out the door. Money capital, time capital, relationship capital. The second two can and have always been able to be facilitated through sweat equity ... but that first one. Damn son, where would I be right now if the first Maserati record I played on had 100k dumped on it for promotion like even the scrubby "big rock" records get. Voting bots -are- the entire PR machine reduced to a number ... a number that effectively ups visibility, access, fanbase building. It's almost kinda brilliantly simple.
So, I botted the absolute hell out of my early posts. And any post that I think rules that nobody is paying attention to. By using steembottracker you can invest SBD you earned back into your own posts in the 20 minute window where you will earn back a disproportionate amount of it.
Profitable....that's another story entirely. The bots exist to make your content more visible. And make money. If they go profitable that is -entirely- your own due dillengence staying up till all hours of the night till steembottracker tells you a bot with high voting power has been greatly underbid this cycle. Even then ... I'd say breaking even is more than worth it.
The other thing to consider about bots.... last night as the market tanked I threw some more scraps of fiat into the steem ecosystem. I fully intend to bot with this, as any SBD i invest now will be paid out in seven days ... and given SBD is in the absolute toilet right now, I can't help but feel like I'm investing my SBD into an SBD reward in the future that will appreciate in value. And gaining some traction.
I sure as hell wouldn't have made the progress I've made so far without doing some serious research into how to semi-profitably work the bot system. Botting aint making anybody rich. It's exposure, exposure exposure.... and even then botting yourself into the trending front page of "music" is going to cost you $70 or $80 SBD and i can't see how that even makes sense. I was considering doing a post about this, saving up $100SBD and just blasting it to the top of everything as an experiment, but ... well ... that's alot of potentially negative visibility that's off brand for my music/synth/production content.
Don't forget about guaranteed profit bots also! @qurator runs @qustodian ... which once you are registed with qurator is a bot that will refund your SBD if the bot has been bid into unprofitability. It's not a huge upvote, but its a guaranteed positive investment. I'm not crazy excited about bots. But I am crazy excited about my content and have been working my ass off on it. Me investing my money into gaining visibility and followers is absolutely positively no different than the system I have come to know and "love".
the music industry