My Bot vs No Bot Experience: The Conclusions
So, if you follow my blog you know that I was doing a no bot week to test out a couple of things.
First of all, I wanted to see my average number of rewards standing on my own two legs and without promoting the posts at all.
I'm happy to say that with no botting my average votes per post is a respectable $14
This isn't much, but it is a lot more than when I first started, that one is a given.
On the other hand, I wanted to see that since bots aren't profitable, and will only break even if lucky, if I could power up faster by not using bots at all.
I would also see if botting would impact my follows and if it could hinder my growth.
Let's take a step at a time and look at all of these factors.
My Organic Votes: A Respectable $14... but!
So, first things first, I was curious to know how would my posts do if I was to not use any bot or paid promotion at all.
I saw that all my posts would reach anywhere from between $13 to $15, but there's a catch.
The bulk of my votes was coming from a SINGLE user.
So, I have to thank @rok-sivante for all of his support.
He is truly my number one fan and I'm grateful for having someone who is so supportive. He has voted in every post of mine and he's a pretty cool guy too.
Hats off to you mate.
In second place, there's @therealwolf with 6.7% - so you can see the huge difference.
This is a bit worriesome for me... having such a HUGE slice of my votes coming from a single user is something I have to consider.
What if he never came back?
I would lose 66% of my post value, and that is A LOT!
What About Overall Profit?
Well, when I was botting only the SP part was profit, the rest had to be used in its entirety to keep the circle going.
This meant that only a small part of the payout would grow my account.
On the other hand, my payouts diminished by a ton, but now I could power up with both the SP and SBD part of the rewards.
The results were... not very good. I was making more on the SP part of the rewards before than I made this week with both parts combined.
So, the profit is better with bots, probably because since visibility is raised I get more "passerby" votes.
What About Followers and Growing?
As far as followers are concerned, this was the metric that seemed the least affected.
However, after considering the numbers and looking at the charts...
...surprise, surprise!
I was growing more when botting than I am right now.
This was really disappointed... I really wanted at least one metric not to be influenced by this experiment, but every single one is - and to the negative.
In Conclusion:
To sum everything up.
Botting increases your profit, your follower growth rate and the SP values of your account.
Not botting is way more comfortable for me, but I'm losing a lot by not doing it.
My "circle" funds are low, so I have to start building them again, but I'm going back to botting for the moment.
I wanted to leave it, but my content is high quality, and if people like us don't use the bots, they will be used only by exploiters and low effort posters, therefore filling the hot and trending pages with bullshit.
It isn't perfect, and I tried, but...
...Bot Away.
Cheers!
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Great content , This post was really interesting , As I have never used a bot but also I don't have the time right now to post content worthy of promotion . When i can i will try it though , As for now I'll stay with the occasional posts that I have time for , Thanks again for good post
Do what makes sense to you at all times :)
Cheers
You got a 10% upvote from santana33, courtesy of @santana33. If you want to support our project please click on the link below;
hahahha,
P.S.: With love "Heavy hands"
Heavy Hands, Heavy Bags, you name it.
You're gonna be a whale soon :P
Lol! this cracked me up. Throws some peanuts.
I'm so glad I discovered bots within my first few days on here. By my third post I was using them, and I credit my getting off to a fast start to that.
Since I've not ever been here at a time before the bot dominance began, there has never seemed anything wrong with them to me. I just look at it as paying for advertising while I grow my follower base.
When I was on FB I saw how boosting posts changed performance of pages (like 3k followers with very little engagement after 2 years without boosting, or 3k highly engaged followers after 3 months with boosting!). So as soon as I found this "boosting" method on here I knew it was just a part of succeeding on the platform.
Yeap... works kind of like that!
Thanks for another great comment.
Cheers
Great Info, plus if you ever get in the "Stacking Way" there is always Old Reliable, STAX ;) I'm getting over $10 a day AVERAGE from Stax. One vote per day, tops. It's a good gig ;)
...on the Undie Acct, btw ;)
Can't really say STAX loves "ME"... She loves
The BIG D!
Delegation, you pervs :P
How much delegation for that TIER?
LOL Not Quite double what you have earned already...
2500 SP for the GOLD tier. I was the first Paying GOLD Member of Stax's Crew. The tiers changed and I was Silver for a little bit, but upgraded as soon as I could. Lemme fetch the levels, I just saw them recently... well, can't find it but:
GOLD = 2500 SP Deli 40% UV = ~$10
SILVER = 1000 Deli 20% UV = ~$5
I think there are also
500 SP
250 SP
100 SP
50 SP
and entry level is just up-voting all STAX Posts @ 100% for a 1% UV
But you have to be posting to the SSG Tag and get a nomination.
From a member, which would be me, or someone else. But the
participation is Key.
Money brings money, man. No free lunches.
what is this STAX? a service of some kind? can you elaborate please
SHE is our Community Bot. I've been with her since Day 1 ;)
See my replies above, but it's a "Member's Only" deal.
For the Silver/Gold Stackers...
EVERYBODY WANT'S SOME... ;)
Honorary member status required @phelimint :P
Good One, tell me another!!! LOL
Phil would have the pitchforks and torches after him, there are about 200 paying members who would string you up right along side of Phil I'm afraid...
There going to string you up man... lol. No honourary members, sorry. And keep her secret man... shhh
I'd like to apply for honorary member status as well @phelimint
Alternatively I may need to learn the "Stacking Way".
U 2 Jr! lol
Never ask, never know :D
Hmmm, how big does one have to be for this to be profitable?
me too!!!!
I am very good at maths.... Immediately I found out how botting works, I knew it was more profitable... I just made a personal decision to ensure the quality of my posts is Good.
Yeah, well, you can always hope you get proven wrong like I did :P
Hmmm, exactly. Besides, bots can be a little hazardous and they sometimes give out less than what you supposed they'd give. This would be something I'd need to write down. What profits did I get from which bots and at what time/amount? It's all way too complicated, but it's necessary for getting it down to a science. It's money lost or earned, after all.
Or you could just use SmartSteem and buy votes from SmartMarket, which give you 2-2.5X the sbd you paid in plus more votes, instead of one big from a bot and the annoying comment.
Just leaving some spam over here, I am sure Max doesn't mind :P
SmartMarket now gives as a maximum 2.2x..... You get to lose some profits for fun :3
I still see in the website the 2.5x indicator, it depends on what time after posting you make the upvote submission.
But is true that it does not matter that much since you are looking for promotion and not that much into profit.
To profit either delegate or sell your votes.
I like that smartsteem gives a lot of small votes instead of one huge one, but you also lose a small amount on every transaction since their return doesn't cover the "curation cut" completely. So it's a dead end game in that regard. And the bid-bot is even worse in their returns from my experience. I used it once by accident (smartsteem vs. smartmarket ... and I chose the wrong one for my intentions) ... so I won't do that again.
I'm one of their top-rated whitelisted users, but I'm not real crazy about their arrangements. If and when there are other options, I use them instead. Which is disappointing. Maybe for everyone. I wish they gave a better ROI consistently. At least enough to cover the curation percentage. I'd use them all the time if they'd just make that adjustment. But losing "a little something" on every transaction doesn't make good sense to me.
I still use it because even though I lose a little bit of SBD in curation, I get a lot more SP, which is, in my eyes, worth more. So if I put 1 SBD and they vote me $2, I recover 0.85 SBD and I get 0.3 SP too. Then I get to recover the SBD with other bots and organic upvotes and I'm winning all around.
I do wish that @therealwolf would revise this so that we could use this service more reliably without losing our SBD investments as it is promoted to be.
I agree with you. Please see my reply to another comment on this same thread.
It would be interesting to see if it matters whether you spend enough to promote to Trending page or only reach the Hot page. Is it still worth it to invest in getting high on the Hot list.
Aaah so I just read this article and it kind of contradicts what I had noticed and commented on in your more recent article here. I might try this for myself at least for a time. So what I understand is that you will most likely stay even or lose a little SBD when you use bid bots, but the SP you collect will be profit.
Times have changed... it's way less profitable now... this post was before bots ran dry and had to decrease profitability. I don't bot at all now, don't even need an experiment.
@spiritualmax do you have any idea why rewards are changing within the time? I've used bots several times and I've noticed that within each day estimated reward seem to pretty much always drop. Example:
Noone downvoted this post and yet my predicted rewards in SBD went down from 78sbd do 71sbd. Which is insane.
I thought that rewards may drop once price of steem and SBD is also dropping. But right now both STEEM and SBD increased their value but my rewards seem to be lower than just a day ago.
I would appreciate if you could share your thoughts. It seem that whenever value of steem and sbd is changing, it affect our rewards negatively.
Yours
Piotr
Its STEEM price going down that makes that happen.
so it depends on both? steem and sbd?
SBD price too.
i'm very sorry for such a late reply. have been away for several days but Im back now :)
just wanted to thank you for your previous comment
Good to know. So the difference between the crypto boom in December and now is significant. Interesting stuff. I feel like three months here is 3 years anywhere else with how fast stuff changes.
When I started reading, I really hoped the bots would lose...
But your experiment proves what I was afraid of... using the bots is more profitable in every way.
That's the dilemma that is bothering me every day again... If you create quality content - as you do - I think it deserves to be read. Unfortunately, the only way to achieve this is by using the bots. :0(
Have you ever calculated how much you lose by using the bots? I started by keeping track in a spreadsheet, but I stopped, because the numbers were higher than I wanted to know...
I didn't, but Ill lose more if I dont use them :(
Looking at what is happening now with @simplymike and what you have said about the blacklisting. Now putting myself to risk. On a moral stance, I would say this is the same thing which happens in everything which is wrong with society. We have now people fighting with people over votes. The issue is with the bots, You have to wonder why all the time is spent downvoting the user, and not the bot to reduce its power and the attractiveness of using one.
Don't attack the nieghbour attack the invading bot.
Well... the community enabled them to appear, so it seems the majority do want them here. Having that in mind, we can only hope to create better ones.
It was an expected outcome Max. In the time that i have started boosting my content i have been able to increase my SP almost double of the time if I had waited for that elusive curie or ocd vote.
I get a whale vote once in a blue moon except maybe from @surpassinggoogle who does vote for some of my content but he is spread far too thin in the Communities he supports to really make a huge difference in my growth.
I've kept a tracker of profits and losses from bid bots and majority of the time I break even or make a very small profit but the SP rewards are huge so in reality I'm better off botting as well.
It does mean that I will not get that elusive curie vote but my growth will be a lot faster.
Combining good quality content and boasting visibility with bots is the way to go. Besides it takes away some space for shit posters to buy into services although I often observe they don't care about operating at a loss as long as they keep boosting their low quality stuff and hope some smuck will be looking at the trending page and be awed by their high payout value and think the shit poster is doing good and upvote the content.
MI indeed puts it in perspective
Yeap, a fine comment, but @moneyinfant really summed up everything perfectly with his.
So ruthless!
So, Curie only votes for people who don't use bots? Or what's the deal here?
Well when they see you constantly getting $10 or more it really lowers your chances.
Any new post that is at $10 before they are submitted is no longer eligible to be curied.
Ooooooh. :( Well, I won't be curied! I'm getting my posts to at least $15 (and the latest ones above $20) to get some optimal SP. I wonder what alternatives there are. But no matter. I'll just grow at a natural rhythm meanwhile :) I'm still quite eager to do the long-term blogging marathon into success.
OCD is still an option though.
What is OCD? (apart from a psychological disorder)
OCD is a curation guild like Curie that finds exceptional posts and rewards them.
I've never been curated by OCD yet... hmmm...
They tend to vote on articles with psychological content / self-development / self-improvement / inspirational / motivational, etc.
Good to know. thanks. I'll look them up.
@maverickinvictus do you have any idea why rewards are changing within the time? I've used bots several times and I've noticed that within each day estimated reward seem to pretty much always drop. Example:
Noone downvoted this post and yet my predicted rewards in SBD went down from 78sbd do 71sbd. Which is insane.
I thought that rewards may drop once price of steem and SBD is also dropping. But right now both STEEM and SBD increased their value but my rewards seem to be lower than just a day ago.
I would appreciate if you could share your thoughts. It seem that whenever value of steem and sbd is changing, it affect our rewards negatively.
Yours
Piotr
So in short - "when in Rome..."
I'm not surprised by your results as they simply verify what I'd already seen on my own account in a more subjective "this is what I think is happening" kinda way. Good to see that validated with hard data, but not a surprise.
Yeah, unfortunately for me... really wanted to ditch the buggers.
You're addicted to buggery :)
LMAO!!!
Well, if bots are buggery, they're some needed buggery for me too, lol. I get ~$20 per post with bots and ~$0.74 per post without bots. ^^' I'd miss out on a ton of SP and views without them.