Dear the greatest Bid-bot owner on Steemit...
There have been some positive changes to how Bid-bots operate over the past month or so, but I still think there is room for improvement, if they wish to put the customer first that is.
Blacklists, white-listing accounts, a 3.5 day voting period, but what about adding a new feature to help users not see their 'promotion' attempt fail due to careless bidding or a fat-cat vote?
Do you want to instantly become the best Bid-bot owner? I have something to say that could make you just that.
pixabay source
First though, a bit on the recent changes, both good, and average.
Blacklisting users
There are plans afoot to create a global blacklist of accounts that are 'abusing' the bid-bots. In short, I think this will be a fruitless exercise.
The abuser will simply create a new account and buy votes until this is spotted. Ad infinitum.
White-listing users
This is better than the above, but is a constant administrative exercise. I would not fancy keeping this list up to date, but it does sound like a step in the right direction.
A Max Bid limit
This hasn't really taken off. I'm not sure why, and suspect it relates to profits.
The 3.5 day voting window
You've probably seen this guy knocking around?
But if you haven't, you are not to blame. In the same way good content is often missed (even with multiple curation teams and the awesome #stewardsofgondor), both older accounts, and certainly new accounts can be forgiven with regards to not knowing about #grumpycat's compliance policy.
Even Bid-bot owners using their own 'non-compliant' Bot missed it, isn't that right Jerry?
What is #grumpycat compliance?
Basically, if you use a Bid-bot (listed here: https://steembottracker.com/) that does not have its 'Max Post Age' set to 3.5 days, you risk a huge down-vote from @grumpycat - 'quality content' or not.
This is a method to provide more time to catch 'abusers' of the tool. Many posts and lengthy replies have been written on the subject and it's not the context of my post today.
Personally, I think the 3.5 day 'rule' is a sound move, and suggest to not risk using one of these 'non-compliant' bid-bots. As you can see, there are plenty more to choose from!
This brings me onto the main topic of this post.
Stop accepting bids that take the R.O.I. into the negative
Why are Bid-bot owners accepting bids that will return a negative R.O.I.?
We are not a cash machine
The owner will lose profit
No you are not a cash machine, at least not to the user of a Bid-bot.
It's not difficult to do some rough maths using the wallets of Bid-bots and their owners, and there certainly wouldn't be a new Bid-bot appearing each week if it wasn't profitable to run one.
They are promotion tools
Fine. So if i send 10 SBD to you and then a 100 SBD vote lands sending the R.O.I for the round to -40%, how do you think that 'promotion' exercise will turn out for me?
I could choose at this point to pick the best examples of negative R.O.I. from the link listed above, but I don't need to.
I'm confident that if you check it yourselves at the point you read this post, you'll see that the majority of the (compliant) Bid-bots returned a negative return, or lower promotion level than expected, in the previous round.
Be the best
If you want to be the best and most popular bid-bot, return bids that send the R.O.I. into the negative.
I think that that this move and the publicity around it will ensure your window is full and you will have far fewer dissatisfied customers to copy/paste the 'cash machine' reply to.
Anyone? What about as a trial?
Asher @abh12345
I'm relatively new here 2 months.. but have paid quite a bit of attention to this exact issue. I agree 100% with you about the problem and have these thoughts to share.
First, the overbidding is in many cases a matter of education, some basically don't know that they are making an automatic bad bet. Also, there is a seedy element too (with a few bots that I won't name), that stacks the deck by "rigging" the vote with large upvotes at the end.
In the beginning I used to think how unfair, but then I realized that with time these 2 issues would sort themselves out. Right now I know of multiple people that are writing and reviewing the different bots and how they play the games that are played. I also know of efforts underway to educate the users so that they understand more what the max vote value really means.
As time goes on I think the market will sort this out. The good ones that provide the mechanics to explain what is happening should prevail over the ones just out for a quick buck. The beauty of the blockchain is that everything is recorded and can be searched, and this will eventually lead to discovery.
I work in the financial markets and the same takes place in there. The more lucrative a market becomes, the better players eventually move in and take market share by offering a better service and/or rate.
I have only been doing this for 2 months and I can see a wide ranging area of opportunity for those that do it "right". And I am sure that there are many here that are far smarter and more capable so I have faith they will get this solved too.
As for a proposal for this particular post, here is one suggestion I would like to see (and I think would help very fast to solve the problem):
Every time they do their upvote, instead of sending the message:
"congratulations you have been upvoted 12.4% by @abh12345... blah blah blah",
but instead they said :
Congratulations on receiving an upvote on your post of 2.4 SBDs from @abh12345, however the vote yielded a negative ROI of -.15% because people overvoted the Max Suggested Bid. (for more information please go to our how overvoting happens link)
If this was done by any bot, they would be not only providing a service to their customers, they would also earn the respect of people like me and you. I think this is a "market solution" that can work. I know I would like to use bots that are upfront and honest and take the extra step of actually educating their users (which would lead to far less stupid mistakes by people that just don't know).
Just my 2 cents... Have a great day and thank you for everything you do!
Good job! Thanks to @abh12345 you have planted 0.95 tree to save Abongphen Highland Forest in Cameroon. Help me to plant 1,000,000 trees and share my Steem Power to the others. Selfvoting is prohibited, but that should be the reason to spread the world to protect our precious environment. Check out profile of our conservation association @kedjom-keku and the founder/coordinator @martin.mikes to get more information about our conservation program. My current SP is 18373.18. Help me to plant more trees with your delegated SP.
Thanks a lot,
your @treeplanter
www.kedjom-keku.com
This is an excellent idea!
Perhaps include a link to the Bottracker too?
I think again, the reason this is not in place is due to some Bot owners not wanting it to. After all, the lack of clarity adds to revenue for them.
Thanks for the detailed reply, i'm being pushed to go and see the water as we've just arrived here in Mauritius. Have a great day, thank you!
haha.. enjoy the waters of Mauritius ;)
and yes that is exactly why they don't do push for that solution. Confusion = money
Can you imagine how fast it would make people want to learn if they got 2 or 3 of these? Nobody likes to lose money. The sad truth is most people see the "upvote" and think they are winning when if fact they are getting churned into oblivion.
Enjoy your day too! (in fact, yours sounds more fun that mine) lol
take care!!!
Indeed - money for the confusers!
Cheers, we will!
This brings us back to the question of whether bid-bots should make you a profit or at least break even - or if they are merely promoting tools where you don’t loose all your money but just a bit.
Break even is fine if we are paying for exposure I think?
I'm trying not to focus on the 'cash machine' aspect too much, and more about post promotion. Clearly there's not much promotion going on for everyone else in a round where someone arrives late with a huge bid?
Yes, clearly not. Something like that is just a huge turndown.
No interest thus far from the BB owners :)
It's a great idea, doubt any of the owners would want to hurt their profits or the profits of the delegators though. We can hope someone less focused on profits might be able to start a tend.
It's most likely the reason it's not in place yet.
Most delegators profits are fixed (the sale takes place prior), so it's down to the Bid-bot owners to decide if they are going to (perhaps) give up a bit of profit, to improve their status in the community.
Thanks for the comment, the first that was actually relevant!
Hello Asher. Thank you for pointing this out. Yes, I wish bid-bot owners take it a step further and refund bids that put the ROI in the negative.
I'm wondering if the argument when it comes to cash (which is surely the reason) would be, 'well it's x thousands less for me, but only a few $s for each customer'. Is that good enough for you? hmmm
Thanks for your comments @eastmael :D
I'm looking at it from the point of view win-win (and would like to see the math as well). Will the the bid-bot owner not earn a profit if he operated like this (return excess bids)? If he earns a profit by operating with a refund-excess-bid policy, why then would he not implement such policy?
Again, I don't have any idea with the expenzes that come with operating a bid-bot and would appreciate if an owner can show us the math behind why implementing such policy will put them in the red. Or if does not put them in the red, perhaps it can provide enlightenment on such a blurry matter.
I hope I make sense. It's already 2:45am here. Lol.
I'm sure some Bid-bot owners have done their math, I'm less sure if they'd be willing to share their profit point though.
Greed?
I checked the comments and didn't see any owner reply. So I guess no bid-bot owner is brave enough to take the challenge I guess.
A shame. I think it would be great publicity, and believe the rounds would be filled each time with smaller bids at the end to take the last spots.
That seems like a sound way to approach the issue to me.
Cheers. What chances do you give of it happening? :D
The problem i view is the understanding from people that bid-bots are not there to give you a good return - that is purely what your content is for. In using a bot you should not expect to increase a return and in doing so is exactly whats causing the increase of abuse and spamming.
Using a bid bot in my eyes is merely a marketing tool, which in any other industry you would pay for. Its an opportunity to get your content noticed in trending sections. If i personally use one and manage to break even on my investment its a wonderful bonus.
If you look deeper into what @grumpycat is doing you may struggle to understand how someone can promote anti-abuse of a system, yet self upvote hundreds of dollars for 3 word comments.
If Ned can do it for 2.5k, then the cat can too. And sweetsssj is paying herself 30k a week via multiple accounts. You can choose to use your stake as you wish, even if it's not going to win any self sacrifice awards.
Agreed Bots are promotion tools, but over bidding the ROI reduces promotion....
I respect your opinion my bro, but with that ideology then anyone can rightly do anything simply because someone else is doing it.
What you're actually saying is anyone with enough power and money can do anything - which will only create a bigger gap of inequality, and destroy one of the many philosophies of steemit that makes its concept so beautiful. In reference to @ned, as CEO its a huge shame that someone with that much responsibility chose to abuse his power and engage in petty politics, and i think he has pissed off a lot of people (inc. larger stakeholders) with his actions.
From my perspective overbidding is a good thing. It will deter those who bid purely for profit as they wont be making any. Those that are willing to take a small hit to their promotional investments are backing their content and will ultimately create a larger following as their exposure increases along with their upvotes from genuine followers and similar authors. We shouldnt be looking to make money from bots, steemit is a community effort built on people's engagement.
I don't. I think embarassment is a pretty strange emotion. I don't really understand it.
you hit the nail on the head! I would probably use voting bots more if this were the case, but it's just not worth risking the negative ROI...
when i first started on steemit i dabbled in voting bots and then cooled off for a bit and just let things unfold organically. then the tracking website came out and as i looked at the ROI i was shocked to see so much - - - -!! everywhere negative ROI! I tried a few that night and only 1 gave me a positive ROI! That's huge.
I hope some of the bot owners see your post - you are spot on!!
*** They could also STOP receiving incoming bids that will take the ROI into the negative realm. That could be another alternative.
Thanks for your comments @mountainjewel
Yes, return bid, or close the round is the idea - an ROI at 0.00 should be acceptable for both parties.
I use some bots too, but have reduced my stake for fear of being gazumped by a huge bid.
Cheers!
Thank you for talking about these innovations. For me it was very important. I hope this article will help my friends. Resteem.
It's great that a lot of bot owners are putting some quality standards and banning plagiarism and shit posts.
Some had upped their game though by complying with two short paragraphs and an image of a marvel character and posting 4-5 of these posts a day. They are what I call a golden shit post haha.
I'm no angel and I boost my posts as well but I am proud of my posts (well most of the time)
But I agree on the whole negative ROI. The bots should not accept anything that would make it a negative. Its not good for the owners and the clients for the long run.
Yes I also use some of the compliant bots with a small amount. I see it as reducing the amount that can be used on posts with little effort.
We'll see what happens - no comments so far from Bid-bot owners. Cheers!
Yesterday was the only day I got a upvote that i can consider profitable while using upvote bots. I sent 0.5sbd to minnowbooster and it sent me upvote worth around $3.5, it didn't work later..lol, they might be fixing something at that time? otherwise I have never seen a profit for using bots. I wonder how things are who throws large SBD to bids, I have never tried that myself.
@minnowbooster is different from the bidding round bots, and could be a safer alternative. You can see the voting power and assess if it's worth a send to you.
Cheers!