For the past week I used the infamous Steemit to send a bid in SBD and receive an upvote on a post of my choice. This week taught me a lot about these programs. It is very easy to loose money doing this, so I want to cover the basics and tips I think will help every minnow out there.
My Bid Bot Experiment
With so many people talking about the bid bots lately, I chose to test one out on a post that did not get a lot of love: something that was relatively small and did not get a lot of traffic. It was a few days old at this time so it was not going to trend from the spike in rewards.
I decided to go big and send 15.86 SBD to the bot. At the time, the that was about $133.20 USD worth of Steem Backed Dollars. That allowed me to receive 14.5% of that bot's voting round. The total USD amount that was sent my way equated to $150.32 USD. A profit of $17.12 USD.
from steembottracker.com
This took my post rewards from about $1 to $21.74. Not too shabby since my aim was only to bring up that post's reward for a more consistent look on my profile page. Not the best reason, but at least it led me to creating this post for everyone.
from steembottracker.com
The numbers look great on 'paper' but since the price of SBD dropped a few days after using the bot, I basically lost value. Had I taken that same SBD and moved it into Bitcoin Cash, Monero, or another coin it is possible that I would have gained value.
Then I could have taken that same amount and sent it back to SBD for a gain. Hindsight is 20/20 and there was no way to know that SBD was going to pull back. However, I am ok with my choice since I am a Steemian in it for the long haul.
Be A Smart Bidder
This has to be the most important section of this post. It is far too easy to blindly send a Steem Backed Dollar to a bot like @buildawhale or even @jerrybanfield's automated up-vote service. But that also makes it just as easy to overbid since we are not checking beforehand to see if the bot is even profitable at that time.
Use the Steem Bot Tracker
This site is the best place to make sure your investment will not go to waste. Created by @yabapmatt, it lists out many bots in order of the amount of time till their next voting round. Most bots are on a 2.4-hour cycle in order to power up to 100% before voting on the next set of bidders' content.
Let's break down the columns that the site displays. (If you are reading this in the future and the site looks different, please feel free to contact me on Discord.)
from steembottracker.com
From left to right, we start with column one. This column has the heading "Bot Name" and is just that, the name of the bot. Each name is also a link to that bot's Steemit page if further investigation is needed.
Second is "Vote Value." This is the total rewards that the bot would pass along to an author if it was to vote them with 100% Steem Power. This is a great statistic for determining where to place your bid. The bots with a smaller vote value will became unprofitable much faster than one like @appreciator.
The third column is "Min Bid" and this is the smallest amount of STEEM or SBD that you can send in order to get an upvote. Never send less than the minimum since some bots will not refund for our mistake.
Fourth we have "Max Post Age." This is how old your post can be before the bot will refuse to vote on the content. Most of them are five or six days old, but I recommend not bidding on posts that old. Receiving a bot bid on a fresh post acts like a promotional event. The sooner the bid and the fresher the post, the more likely we'll hit the trending pages.
Fifth, we have "Total Bids" and this is the current value of all the bids that the bot received in its current voting round. This is a nice metric that we can use to gauge the popularity of each bot over time.
In column six we have "Max Profitable Bid" and the most important statistic this tool provides. Over time this amount goes down until it hits zero. Once the amount says "0.00," sending any STEEM or SBD will be at a cost to the sender.
It is smart to make sure we send our payment early if we wish to send a large amount. Also it is good to stick to the bots with huge vote values like @upme. That way, we can be sure to make a profitable return on our investment.
Column seven is "Last Vote" and this is simply the amount of time that passed since the previous voting round.
Eighth we have "Next Vote," which is the amount of time left until the bots vote on their current bids.
Number nine is "Details" and can be a great way to see what kind of payouts the current bids may receive and what the previous round did receive. We use this to plan out the best bot for our investment.
Finally we have column 10 and "Send Bid." This is where we can have the site bid for us. I have not used this feature and only send my SBD or STEEM via Steemit. However, this feature is there for all who wish to use it.
How Much To Bid
This is entirely up to the bidder. For a minnow and someone new to Steemit, there is not a lot of SBD in their account yet. In order to make these bots most effective, sending at least 10 SBD at current market value is great. If everyone starts to only send 10 SBD to the largest bots this will increase that number, though.
If you want to send the minimum amount to several bots, go for it but make sure to do your research on each bot. Also, be sure they are still profitable when you bid. No matter how much you choose to send, if it is more than the "Max Profitable Bid" it's better to just hold.
Will I continue To Use Bid Bots?
About three days into my experiment I was convinced I did not like them because they always leave a comment on the post saying something like, "This post got a 4.39% upvote from [enter bot name here] by @jrswab." That kind of makes me feel sleazy, to be honest.
However, I may still use these bots if I feel a post contains enough value and I want to increase my reach a bit more. But since this all costs SBD and STEEM that I earn, I plan to me more resourceful regarding where I choose to spend my hard-earned STEEM.
Thanks For Reading!
If you have a topic that you would like me to cover and share what I learned over the last ten years of blogging please let me know!
PS: Yes I vote bot'd this post. For, you know... post posterity or something... :rofl:
Other Posts In The Series:
4 Reasons To Avoid Steemit Drama
Using Journals To Improve Our Blog
How To Leverage Criticism To Improve Your Blog
Simple SEO Techniques To Unlock Exposure
How To Stay Motivated As A New Blogger
Useful. Thanks!
Thanks for this post. I have used a bot a few times and did check the voting power of it before sending SBD but still couldn't see the benefit but I didn't have much to send so that may have been it. Everytime I get SBD I convert and power up and then think oh yeah I should keep some side for a bot on a great post with little love.
I'm not a fan of them posting in the comments section either but I guess that's their way of self promotion.
I'll check out the bot page too. Looks like it will be very helpful if choosing to use a bot.
Awe yes. The more SBD or STEEM a user sends the bigger the spread will be. But with that comes more effort in making sure you are not over bidding.
Very helpful post. Thank you. Resteemed.
Since my current plan is to put everything I earn back into the platform, I think bidbots are a helpful way to boost your earnings. Getting an ROI on what you already have in the platform is great. Even better, if you are pushed into the Hot or Trending for your tags it will get extra views and upvotes. It's probably one of the only ways for new Steemians to get their posts out there.
This is a good point as long as their is profit in STEEM or SBD then it sounds like SP growth would happen over time.
I discovered this site a few days ago as well, but wasn't really sure on how to use it, but with this, I have learned some more and gonna try it out.
Thanks
Make sure to practice safe botting!
Thank you for the information. I will have to try it out.
Looking forward to following you and your posts.
Re-steeming this.
Thank for reading and for the resteem!
Thanks for the great article. Have not used any voting-bot yet, but if I decide to so so I will come back to your article.
@jrswab thanks for the informational post! I'm trying to expand my account and am thinking of purchasing ~160 Steem. I want to use it as efficiently as possible and your post should help.
Keep Steeming!
I don't use bots because I enjoy the engagement with others ad I can't do that if I use a bot. I guess in a lot of ways I am old fashioned, but to me personal contact is better any day.
Why are you not able to interact woth you commenters if you use a bid bot?
You miss some of the content as the bots do the automatic comments and upvotes. You may never see them.
Gotcha, those kinds of bots will indeed mess with interaction. Vote bots just vote an a post.
Nice little experiment. Like you, in the end I'm not planning to use bidbots very often, if ever. Thanks for the write-up!
Just discovered this website a 2 days ago, it is really good for making sure you are now wasting your precious steem.
yes very much so! It's the only reason I even ran this experiment in the firsnt place.
I feel you. I almost wish there was a way for the bid-bots to not post in your comments, but I suppose they need to. Oh well. I'm going to continue to use them while I build up my readership. And, honestly, it does motivate me when I make a little profit. So, at least for that reason, it's helpful. Did you see this post? https://steemit.com/steemit/@elpompador/6s5xkm-how-to-make-usd1-000-a-day-on-steemit
They can come in handy. I have always wondered about their ROI, so to read your post gave me some more insight into that matter. The thing I dislike the most, - as you also stated - is that they leave the comments. I agree, feels kinda sleazy. Great post. Very helpful.
The curation reward for those voting occurred to me also. Perhaps this could be an incentive to help create more vote activity? And helping the posts rewards to look better is a valid reason. Voter psychology plays into this, and we have to look at this as an investment, as well as a blog. Voter investment, as well as our own.
Thanks for your reply.
I agree. If we have a goal of maximizing our SBD and STEEM than these bots (when used correctly) can help us move from a minnow to a dolphin
Great experiment. I don't really have the liquid SBD to be tossing around on 15sbd tests, so I'm glad you did it for us. It's probably profitable to use the bots if you do it consistently and get into a cycle, and those small 'profits' each day add up.
Yes this is very true. There is a build up and that gets bigger the more SBD you can place into each bid.
Your post is informative and helpful, didnt know about steem bot tracker before this! Bid bots may come in handy whenever i feel like I have written a good post to increase its visibility so that others can shower some love on it.
Thanks, I've been trying to figure out how these bots can be used profitably, do you think it's the way to go? Or a generic growth is nore advisable?
Organic > Bid Bots
Having an account full of bid bot upvotes and no natural engagement makes our blog look shady
Spot on post! Very nicely broken down and explained, thank u for putting the effort and time to this, Salute!
Thanks boss for your post. Was pretty good in steering me in the right direction. Used bots 1st time to get some votes. Hopefully it helps promote my work.
Please support me also @rishi-sayz
I had issues with using bid bots.
But this has been helpful.
Thank you@jrswab
Followed and upvoted
welcome and best of luck out there <3
This post has been resteemed from MSP3K courtesy of @jrswab from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ).
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Wow dude this shit is opening our eyes to the power
Súper useful! Thanks for sharing the info
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Awesome post, this is very helpful, at least with this I will know where and when to start bidding for it to be profitable, or at least avoid lose. Thank you
this is a great post, i was looking for more information on bots lately
thank you