Are Upvote Bots Ethical?

Some people find the use of upvote bots to be an unethical means of raising your content visibility on the trending pages. People wish that upvotes were indicative of true human interest in the posting content being display, and hey, I get that, but the way things are structured on Steemit and much of the rest of the world, like Unicorns and sharks with lasers attached to their freakin' heads, it just isn't so...

Look, who do the bots really help? I would say that while they can help rich people, the wealthy often are able to boost their own posts simply by upvoting themselves with their monster whale accounts. So, really, the bots tend to help minnows gain visibility and increase their odds of success. That said, the bots are also a money making business model most of the time and you need to be cautious not to erode away your precious STEEM by paying upvote and resteem bots. The way things look on SteemBotTracker.com can be confusing and appear like you're going to profit, but usually, you never do. You're often only getting around 75% of your money back after 7 days and a lot more visibility than you would if you just pumped out content and crossed your fingers.

I hate how it is with the upvote bots right now, and I wish that as a community we pressured them to share more of the profits for the author. Yes, they are trying to make money for the investors and some for themselves, but it should be a profitable experience for the author too, which it usually is not. Writing content for the community and taking a 25% loss is not reasonable or good. On the other hand, writing content without sizable upvotes supporting your post usually ends badly for the writer with their hard work being buried under many poor quality whale posts.

So, to help my fellow Steemians out I thought I would write a post about what I've learned at SteemBotTracker.com.

#1. MinnowVotes - Best upvote bot profit-wise.

The @minnowvotes upvote bot has a 10%/20% upvote value for your bid. This means that they try to make sure you always make at least a 10% profit on your bid after curation (25% of vote value). The downside is that this bot does not have a very high vote value, limited to just $6.34. This means you need to keep your bids low for this bot and it also means that you will not get to jump in for each round because the bidding will fill up fast.

#2. UpMe - Second best upvote bot.

The @upme upvote bot has a -5%/16% upvote value for your bid. You can lose money on this upvote bot, going into the negative by as much as -5%, but most of the bots are around -10% or worse, and the +16% is high profit potential compared to most upvote bots.

#3. Rocky1 - Third best upvote bot.

The @rocky1 upvote bot has a -5%/15% upvote value for your bid. This bot is essentially the same situation as @upme but not quite as profitable, with a slight +1% profit potential advantage when using @upme compared to @rocky1.

Currently, these three bots seem to be a great way to benefit yourself in the Steem ecosystem.

There is another way to benefit yourself on Steem.

A new method coming into popularity is SP delegated memberships.

The way this works is that you delegate a certain amount of your own SP to a specific account (you always have control of your SP and can remove delegation at any time) and that account will upvote your future posts perpetually as long as you are delegating SP to them. Hobo.Media loves this idea because it creates small upvoting circles that can assist the minnows in building reputation and visibility. For this reason @hobo.media is trying to provide a subscription service for a small group of people.

The hobo.media subscription is going to be a very small list. We will focus on quality content over quantity, so each participant will receive one upvote and one resteem per week. Upvoting 10 members per day, this allows @hobo.media to provide a $2.10 upvote at 100% power to its members each week, and a $0.70 per upvote at 100% power per week for members delegating to the @blake.letras program.

The @hobo.media delegation membership has a 300 SP delegation enrollment for entry. If you have 300 SP you can delegate it to be 1 of up to 70 members in this program being offered an upvote and resteem once per week. Your SP always remains yours and you can get out of the membership whenever you wish. Membership is perpetual if you desire it to be, as long as your 300 SP is delegated with @hobo.media you will receive a weekly upvote and resteem.

Need something a bit more affordable? The @blake.letras delegation membership has a 50 SP delegation enrollment for entry. If you have 50 SP you can delegate it to be 1 of up to 140 members in this program being offered an upvote and resteem every other week. Your SP always remains yours and you can get out of the membership whenever you wish. Membership is perpetual if you desire it to be, as long as your 50 SP is delegated with @blake.letras you will receive a weekly upvote and resteem.

But how do I delegate my SP?

Step #1: Go to SteemBotTracker.com!

Step #2:

Step #3:

Step #4:

Hobo Media Membership is where it is at!