I used to promote my posts, bit never noticed a difference and saw it as a waste of money, bit now when you promote you get a upvote from @promote and your posts gets prompted, it's a win win, but the best thing is the @promote bot does not make a profit
I have the same experiences with promotion. I don't really think anyone checks out the promoted tab, but I guess it might be worth it with this new bot. And I think it's great that it's not making profit, and instead let's it all go back to the community.