While it still tempts me sometimes, I haven’t paid for votes since last June when I vowed to stop. You do get the satisfaction that your post has a double-digit pay-out but the number is an illusion.
What you may want to consider is delegating to steem-ua. This gives you a daily vote if you loan them 250SP, one per day and is based mostly off your length of service from what I see. It is supposed to be off the quality of your content, but I have my doubts about that.
Is this paying for votes? You could look at it that way but it appears more ‘acceptable’ than doing it the sledgehammer method. You can also remove you delegation and get your STEEM back anytime.
Have a look at my posts and check the steem-ua vote weight if you are interested and then you can decide.
I will look into that. What I really want is to just upvote all the good content out there by myself and I have by being thrifty I have collected a reasonable amount of SP, but with a inflation of 8-9% a year you feel a bit like Sisyphos. Maybe Steem-ua is a better way, but I prefer to vote myself instead of delegating.
I also use the @steem-ua service. They try to reward content based on the quality of your content, your networking abilities and user engagement. So it's not that you get higher votes, when you delegate more Steem. It's probably a good thing.
There's been negative talk about @steem-ua from some but there's only so much one can do when it comes to AI and voting.
It's still the best thing out there if you look at it from a financial point of view and ROI.
Most people who have been here for > 6 momths seem to have delegated. That speaks for itself really.
It doesnt seem a great thing for new people though. They tend to have a very low rating.
That's true. People who are new and think, all they need to do is delegating some SP and then getting a huge ROI are probably pissed.
At least @steem-ua offers help to grow through their discord as well.