I'm a bit late in making this post but taking into account the unintended losses being made by several minnows who use paid upvote botes and don't do their math right, I want to tell them the truth.
If you are the one who use bid bots often to increase your post payout a bit then you should be careful in times like these when SBD market rates are sky-rocketing. Upvoting your posts through bid bots is not always profitable in terms of rewards. Of course they do help in gaining visibility for the post and a little increase in reputation score but most minnows use them to increase their posting rewards. I’d like to caution all such people here.
Most of us were excited to learn that prices of SBD went over 15 USD a couple of days back. It’s still rolling over 7 USD whereas Steem is only at 1.38 USD at the moment. So let’s calculate what effects do these have on our use of paid upvote bots.
Truth Behind Using Upvote Bots
Most people use bots to get double worth of vote for what they paid for. For example, if you pay 10 SBD, you expect a vote worth of 20 SBD i.e. a 200% vote on your payment. But this is what you get at the end:
You paid 10 SBD --> get 20 SBD vote.
Less: 25% curation reward = 20- 5 = only 15 SBD worth final payout.
50-50 payout split means = 7.5 SBD + 4.36 Steem (at the ongoing internal rate of 1.72 per Steem).
In a normal scenario, you can easily assume that you got a 150% return on your investment and celebrate your smartness.
So How Do I Make A Loss?
Apparently, it seems that you profitably turned your investment to 150% by just paying an upvote bot. But do note that the market is very volatile at this instant and the insanely high market rates of SBD won’t be the same for long. Since SBD is pegged to USD, an attempt to maintain its rate to 1 USD is an ongoing process on Steem blockchain. Thus it won’t be long before SBD prices equals to USD again.
Considering market rates, let's re-evaluate what you paid and what you got. In reality you paid an equivalent of 17 USD to the bot today (10 SBD @7 USD). But when you get the payout 7 days later, SBD may be at 1 USD. So the valuation of your payout will be:
7.5 SBD = 7.5 USD
4.36 Steem (@1.72) = 7.5 USD
Net Payout = 15 USD
Total Investment = 17 USD
Net loss = 1.7 SBD
i.e. a loss of 11.76% on your SBDs just for using an upvote bot which apparently gives you a 200% return!
And mind it, the higher the SBD price in the market, the higher the loss you incur on your payments to the bots. This loss is even higher when you use bidding bots which are being bidded heavily in most voting windows like @booster & @postpromoter.
But Few Of The Bots Have Started Accepting Steem Now!
Don’t fall into their lure of multi-currency acceptance when they say they now accept Steem too. They are taking current market rates of SBDs into consideration when accepting Steem payments and not the Steem blockchain’s median rates. Even @yabapmatt's SteemBotTracker tool fails to take this calculation into account when displaying your vote share. It will display the share of your vote value as if you paid it in SBD but the actual vote you get will be far lesser. Moreover, there are only couple of bots right now who have declared their acceptance of Steem for upvotes and these bots' voting windows are being heavily bidded compared to other bots. But it's just a gimmick if they are not providing any benefit ofr using Steem over SBD. You can easily convert the required Steem to SBD from the internal market instantly and pay them as well in SBDs! So better do that and use other bots whose voting window is not that much congested, if you really want to buy an upvote from these bots.
Here's an Example With Steem Payments Made To Bots
My friend @chetanpadliya wanted to invest some money into Steem by buying SBDs. Since SBD rates were insanely high, I advised him to purchase Steem instead. Immediately after purchasing some Steem, he tried using Steem to upvote his post by using bots like @smartsteem and @booster. See for yourself what he received:
Paid to @booster = 5 Steem
Vote received = 2.26 Steem (and it was a profitable bidding-window)
Paid to @smartsteem = 2 Steem
Vote received = 1.33 Steem (and they dub it as 135% return)
So I suggested him to use @tpot which delivers over 250% return even on paying Steem. Yeah, @tpot still does her job well ...always pouring you a cup of hot tea!
Then What's The Best Way To Put Your SBDs to Use Now?
For all those having surplus liquid SBDs, I’d suggest you to either sell it on some exchange like Bittrex (Do get your account verified there before sending any payment. Several accounts get stuck there when it comes to withdrawal for the want of verification. Their Support & UX sucks) or just use the internal market on Steemit to convert your SBDs to Steem. That’s the best option to get more Steem in your account at the moment.
Here’s a good tutorial for a step by step process to withdraw your Steem money and turn it into fiat currency:
How to get my $teemit money into my bank account
So let’s all celebrate the spike in SBD rates and go with the old adage:
“Make hay while the Sun shines”.
UPDATE:
SteemBotTracker tool was updated to include Steem, USD and Post payout values after the publication of this post.
@tpot bot has stopped accepting Steem payments after the publication of this post.
Please use bots at your own discretion after taking care of all risks associated with these. Thanks!
Keep Steeming! 💓
Would it be better, in this case, to upvote a post that is 6 or 5 days old? So the value of SBD is closer to when you paid for it?
Well it all depends on the profit that the bot is offering and the amount of risk you are willing to take. Also note that some of the bots don't upvote posts older than 5 days. So from the time you transfer your payment to the bot to when you get your post payout rewards and then you are able to trade that money (for availing the higher market price of SBD), it's a risk of about 2 days. Market is highly unpredictive and anything can happen in a day or two. But going by the trend in past week, if you decide to put money on bots, do check on profitability ratio. For example, if you only look for doubling your bid on a 6 day old post, you will still incur a loss.
EXAMPLE:
Say you paid $1 and got $2 upvote. So after deducting about 25% curation rewards, you will receive a payout of 1.5. On a 50-50 split, you will get 0.75 SBD and 0.37SP (on current Steem rates on the blockchain). Now if market rate of SBDare still maintained at 12USD and Steem at 2.25 USD, your total payout worth is (0.75x12) + (0.37x2.25) = 9.83 USD whereas you had invested 12USD worth of SBD. So you GOT A NET LOSS OF 18% and that too by taking a risk on market price fluctuation for a day or two.
So in case you need to use bot, aim for very high profitability which can give you higher SBD payment even after 50-50 payout split and also the return should be profitable enough to compensate for your market risk.
Hope you understood my point.
This is an incredible response. I actually forgot about the loss of the curation rewards... I'm sure most people forget about that. So if I have a post worth about $4 SBD when I would only get $3 SBD for that... and then split 50-50.
I've found it's really frustrating when you use a bot with 2 minutes to and it looks like it'll be a good ROI (say 80%) and then in that last minute someone comes in with massive bids and drives the ROI down to say 7%... happens so often. You can't really control if you get a high profitability upvote or not.
Alright, today was my last day using bots until the SBD comes back down...
Thanks for your response, it's brilliant!
Although I did notice you bid on the @upme bot for this post... ironic?
Aah, very intelligent question! In fact, I was waiting for this point to be raised by someone. I'm glad you did.
Let me clarify again that not everyone uses bots to directly reap rewards from them. Earning direct profit from upvote bots is one of the many reasons to use them ...and admittedly the most popular one. Some use them to give higher visibility to their posts and some to increase their reputation score too. Everyone has got their own reasons.
With this post, I wanted to caution noobs by warning about the increased risk associated with upvote bots to book a profitable deal with them. You are free to use them at your own discretion knowing the risks very well.
You must have also noticed that I used the upme bot on the sixth day to minimize the market risk. I also took utmost care to bid at the last moment to book about 350% return on my payment.
Another thing you can note is I put a bid on a bot which had the highest vote value in the market. When the vote worth is big enough, it would need a bigger amount bid at the last moment to disrupt my calculation. So bigger bots are safer to bid a small amount. Finally, I'd like to mention that I was mentally prepared to loss my bid amount. It's like how much you can afford to loss. Not all minnows can afford to loss their money and forget about it. The risks at stake are higher than perceived and that is the reason many people repent later. Hope you got my point now!
Oh. I understood your point straight away... I was just being super cheeky!
Because of you, your excellently explained post and your suprer generous comments I've started a spreadsheet and worked out all the maths behind the bidbots.
I can now see that there is potential for profit... but the ROI needs to be closer to 80% or above to make it worthwhile (assuming SBD doesn't decrease in that time).
I'll admit that before your post I saw bidbots as virtually money for nothing, so I owe you a great debt for encouraging intelligent decision-making. Thanks heaps for everything!
Thank you!
P.S.:
When you talk about 80% ROI, do consider to go through the example given in the post once more. It's for 200% return that still gives a loss.
Thanks a lot for clearing so many doubts.
You're welcome @chetanpadliya!
Whoa! There is big time calculations. Thank you for sharing this information. Nice post
I'm glad that you found it helpful.
Wow! Very informative post. Thanks for sharing friend. Have a great day friend.
Thanks for finding this information of some use to you!
And thanks for your wishes and visit too!
Thank you very much for sharing a good post... :)
You're welcome. I know you don't use any paid bot, still you read this post. You deserve my extra thanks and gratitude for it but I have only one word to communicate it: THANK YOU!
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STOPI'm new to steemit and basically still getting the hang of everything. Good to know this kind of things. Thanks for the information.
You're welcome! My best wishes to you on this platform. You will learn everything soon.
Thanks for useful info @xyzashu!
You're welcome @lizelle!
I'm not using any bots but sometimes some account just upvotes your posts without me asking them. Am I in trouble?
No, you ain't in any trouble. You're in for a good luck! Happy times ahead!
Really informative post ! thanks for your effort my friend !!
Glad to find such an encouraging feedback. Thank you!
Thank you my friend !
WooHoo!!!
@Tpot has arrived to the party. Thanks to @xyzashu for being a community member and posting wonderful contents.
Please keep visiting our discord server.
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