How much does it cost to run a Steem voting bot in Google's Cloud?

I have been operating a Steem voting bot in a linux VM on my own computer since the middle of 2016. This year, I thought I'd see how expensive it would be to move to the cloud. Here's what I found.

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Costs

As I have reported before, I have been running a Steem voting bot (not accepting bids) in a Linux VM instance on my own computer since the middle of 2016. It's a fairly naive algorithm, and after turning it on, I have done some tuning, but I haven't done very much with the algorithm that selects the posts for voting. Late last year and earlier this year, I ran some experiments in the cloud.

My first move was over to AWS. After a few days, I estimated that it would cost me about $10 per month to run there, so I went ahead and shut it down again. After-all, it's basically free when it's running on my own computer. With the size of my stake at the current prices of Steem, it's just not worth a $10 per month expense.

A couple months later, however, I thought I'd check out the "always free" tier of Google's cloud service (which - to my way of thinking - isn't really always free) and see what it costs there. I started that in February, and let it run through March.

After the first full month of operation, the bottom line cost is 18 cents ($0.18) for the entire month (minus the remainder of today).

From the Google Cloud web site, here's a graph of the monthly cost:

ROI

Of the various accounts that are making use of my voting bot code, I only moved one to the cloud, @remlaps2. Before I get into the results, there are two things to keep in mind.

First, my primary coding purpose was to support authors of content that brings value and attention to the Steem blockchain. Rewards are only a secondary goal. If the bot is voting on attractive content that others miss, it's not getting much from curation rewards, but it is accomplishing my primary goal.

Second, as noted before, the post selection algorithm is still fairly naive. With those caveats, here are some approximate results during March:

Cost of STEEM on 3/1: $0.428992, Effective Steem Power on 3/1: 239.959
Cost of STEEM on 3/31:$0.460733, Effective Steem Power on 3/31: 240.93
Change in price: $0.031741, Change in effective Steem Power (curation rewards): 0.971

Value of 30-day curation rewards at 3/1 price: $0.417
Value of 30-day curation rewards at 3/31 price: $0.447

Percent change in price: 7.40%, Percent change in effective Steem Power: 0.4%
APR in price: 88.8%, APR in effective Steem Power: 4.8%

Dollar Value on 3/1: $102.94
Dollar Value on 3/31: $111.00
Change in Dollar Value: $8.06
Percent Change in Value: 7.82%
APR Change in Value: 93.84%

Here's a graph of @remlaps2 curation returns (in terms of STEEM):

Discussion

So, by the most conservative comparison, with ~240 SP staked, the bot gained $0.41 by spending $0.18, and obviously it would be proportionately better if the voting account held more Steem Power. Overall, it seems to be a reasonable expense (as long as STEEM does not find its way back to $0.08). Also, I did some tuning in the middle of the month that might lower next month's cost.

Of course, the alternative is still free, so - for the time being - I'm not sure if I'll be moving other accounts to the cloud or not. Either way, it was a worthwhile experiment, and maybe provides some useful information to others.

Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

Steve is also a co-founder of the Steem's Best Classical Music Facebook page, and the @classical-music steemit curation account.