Regardless of whether we like it or not, bid-bots appear to be here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. This is the natural and logical result of refusing to fix the enormous gap between self-interest and the game-theory of Steemit, where maximizing selfishness will lead to compounding benefits. It was either going to be this or 99% of network activity was going to be self-voted. I'm not sure which is better.
So, with the begrudging acceptance of one who has campaigned against bid bots, then reluctantly embraced them, let's look at a few things that I can tell from the bidding logs a great deal of you are doing wrong.
This would be the cardinal sin under the current delegation regime. Don't do it. Skipping it will cost you and your fellow bidders money.
This is probably the biggest one causing problems for users, and it's where most of your (and my) losses come from.
Avoid bidding near the end of a round. It's safer to have your bids in with 3 minutes left on the timer, and even that is pushing it – 4+ is better. This prevents you overbidding a round, or inducing others who are less careful to overbid the round, resulting in losses for everyone. The timer on the bot tracker regularly desyncs and can be off by as much as 90 seconds, plus you need to account for transactions time and the bot software to recognize your bid.
This isn't Ebay. Sniping doesn't really work so well when you need to sign your transaction to a blockchain.
You may be able to get post in without curation, and therefore bid up a bot over a "loss" after the -25% cut, but most other users either can't or won't. Doing this will come directly at their cost and, to me, qualifies as "rude but technically possible.
I see people purchasing bids for dead posts that are already over 30 minutes old at a loss, with no hope of receiving any views or attention based no how much they bid. You may as well give up on this, bots are not money printing machines anymore (unless you own one.)
If you can, try to get whitelisted at a selective bot like SmartSteem to reduce the pool of other customers you must compete with. Use the few bots with an active blacklist and anti-abuse measures, such as BuildAWhale and Smart Steem, both of which are often profitable. If you need to bid early, use a bot with an ROI limit, as shown above, to minimize potential losses.
Things go wrong. Not every bid you submit will receive the appropriate vote. You will need to audit, like reconciling a checkbook.
I try to use a maximum formula dependent on each bots minimum bid value (Say, 2x min bid +1, or 3x -1, etc,) but one thing I do no matter what - add a -1 SBD to my bid formula. It's a lot harder to go wrong under-bidding than over bidding, not only do you create less losing rounds for others, but your individual RoI per SBD spent will be higher.
Kind of a no brainer, but it's hard to hit the exchange at the last second.
Don't be the catalyst for the next reward pool war.
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Getting roi from bidbots is the dumbest game on steem right now.
It's a casino where the house always wins.
Perfectly said. I just wish these political drama queens would realize this. It's ridiculous to say bid-bot users are abusers. There are problems with the trending page and some are claiming that bid-bots are scamming those who use them because they loose money after curation 99% of the time. To me the biggest profit of bots is getting more followers.
Yeah and then the issue is that 80% of the followers aren't engaged to vote on future posts or they are bots so oftentimes they are worthless.
In my case 27.5% of my followers are dead followers and 80.6% are ghost followers. It seems that most accounts have 80% dead followers. That is to be expected from alomost 1 million users and only ~64 K Daily Active Accounts. I'm actually happy to see that my dead follower count is lower than many of the popular accounts.
At the end 20% of your followers will make up 80% of your interactions.
Yeah it is true. I feel like Twitter and Instagram are bot orgies as well or just follow for follow madness so I guess in comparison a lot of other platforms have similar sort of issues.
We are actually better than all of them. So there is bit of a bright side too. You can say that the cup is at least half full.
Very true
I did not know about Roi, thank you! :)
Have you factored in Operation Clean Trending? That must be cutting profits quite a bit.
I like this post. 3 days into steemit, I found out about the bid-bot and I did 2 trials and it was positive.
I just started to take Steemit very serious and I found this article very helpful.
I got some SBD that I earned from some comments. and I want to double my efforts to post some good content related to photography basically. and I am willing to pay some bots to boost it.
Really thank you you just post it in the right time for me.
Keep it up.
Hi @lexiconical! You have received 0.1 SBD @tipU upvote
from @cardboard !
@tipU! upvotes with 200% profit and pays 100% profit + 50% curation rewards to investors :)
thank you the science that you have given me tonight tentan bot
@lexiconical that is some great input on using bidbots. Choosing the right bot and playing at right time is key to get better return....
@lexiconical - great post here on the use of bid-bots. They are a fact of life on Steemit it's true. If you want to move up in followers and hope to reach Dolphin or Whale status, then one must use bid-bots to increase your exposure and hopefully more SP & SBD as well. Upvoted!
thanks; for. sharing this ;posts😔:-$💗
Great article and very informative, thanks for sharing. I've smashed the upvote button for you!
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thanks for sharing this posts i also used this method
its really amazing post @lexiconical i think your most of the post are awesome 👍😍 i will wait your next post
What do you guys think about an alternative - bots that just do straight upvote, without bidding? Like @minnowbooster or @tipu.
Also, thanks for sharing the knowledge, @tipU upvote this post with 0.1 sbd :)
keep it up.good to see on this post.knowledgeable post to all
"where maximizing selfishness will lead to compounding benefits. It was either going to be this or 99% of network activity was going to be self-voted. I'm not sure which is better."
This has been so accuracy put into words that I wouldn't have been able to do so if I tried for a whole day.
I have used bots in the recent pasts. My position on them is that it is what it is and the idea of free choice is bound to effect us in away that we might not like. Doesn't mean that giving up the option of choice is going to do us any favors.
For now I am not using any bots and there is chance that I might never.
Even then I appreciate the pointers you laid out as they make sense to to the logical part of my brain.
i learn something from special person @r2cornell
"minnowbooster" In order to lease SP you would need some steem to pay for the loan. You should check out minnowbooster and get familiar until you get some steem.Otherwise you give much time to steem this is the right way
a very useful post, thanks for the post ..
This is very informative and will benefit many who bid for vote. Thanks!
People who post geniun content doesn’t care about bid-bots but who uses bid-bots for then your post is super helpful.
I would recommend you please add some nice footer in your post so that reader can easily follow you.
I have designed very nice footer here. Please let me know if anyone interested for it. I can design for you as well in exchange of little SP delegation.
no matter how good or bad bidders are, there will always be the same winners of this game: the bid bots...
I have noticed a lot of bots now have a capped roi at 10%.
Good advice. Every bid bot users really need to read this post. As a user myself I made it a habit to check the bottracker websites before using any bots. Unfortunately, not all users seem to do so because I often encounter negative ROI due to over bidding and last second bidders. The worst I've seen is when someone bid 200 SBD on @booster effectively pushing the ROI to -76% and fucking that round along with everyone bidding on it. I think that post only manage to get $96 worth of upvote. The reason? @booster does not have enough voting power to accomodate 200 SBD. I'm not sure what @booster max vote value now but that day its max vote value is less than 100 SBD. The bid was for @clear-water and was sponsored by @fyrkken, not sure if I got the spelling right. This is the result of not checking the bottracker website and blindly bidding. Hopefully @fyrkken can read this article so as not to make the same mistake twice since it won't just affect him but other people as well, mostly us minnows.
P.S. I was not among those who are bidding that day so it doesn't really affect me. I'm just telling what I saw that day.
A good list thanks!
The problem with bots is that there is no quality control (on most of them anyway) so anyone can just post rubbish and boost it to 'hot' or 'trending'. It does seem that they are here to stay for now - I use them on my best posts - not shorter posts and competitions etc I see that as bad practise.
I think your right alot of people vvid right at the end and just muck up the profit for everyone else! There are plenty of bots so your best to just bid on the next one
Thanks for the information! Great post. Personally, I prefer bots that straight up upvote as it provides better ROI and is much easier to use. Your post might change my mind though. ~@soccernews
Most people rarely wins the bids.
i found this article - huge information for paid steemit blogging ! The information will be very useful for newbies !!
many many gratefulness for your valuable article @lexiconical
You got a 15.04% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @lexiconical!
Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!
thanks @lexiconical for this information and also for the comment of others..
Hello, thanks for sharing this posts, good to see on this post.
Your post is very good!
Now look me in the eye and Follow Me @cryptopay-blogThe bot game is sadly one you got to play in order to make any money on this platform and to get your post visible at all. It's a real problem. Unless of course you plonk like hundreds of thousands of dollars into your account and upvote and delegate and so forth.
But still, I wish people read your article. Just look at this masterpiece of complete lack of common sense:
It doesn't take a genius to understand how these bid bots work. When it goes over half the vote worth everybody loses, including you! This one for instance is 274 in total, and this guy plonks down 372 STEEM. Well enjoy the profits, appreciator, can't say I feel sorry for that budgets guy.
And indeed I can understand your points very well. It can get a bit too spicy in the heat of the moment and people tend to fall over themselves a little in stressful situations like that. But use your head man. If you really must drop that amount of money on bots then put it in a couple of them.
Thanks for the heads up dude! Long time no see you by the way, hope things are well for you and your GF. I was one of the many (or few) who complained against bidding bots but I leveled up my Steemit maturity and finally understood that this is a business so no regrets! Cheers Pal!