How Much SBD Are You Losing Every Day?

There are a number of ways to earn money on Steemit and today we're going to look at one that you're probably already doing, writing posts.

But how much money are you leaving on the table that you could be putting in your pocket??

How do you know that you're maximizing the value of your posts? How do you get the highest amount of money possible so you can continue to grow your brand and spread your reach?

The easiest, simplest way is followers. They upvote your posts because they like your content, like you, or are just feeling generous. Maybe a whale's cat sat on the keyboard and accidentally gave you a 100% upvote for a Meeeeeowlion Dollars! (sorry, couldn't resist)

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Bid Bots

Whether you have 1 follower or 1,000 followers, you can increase the payout amount you get on a post by using Bid Bots. We'll skip the whole morality, sustainability, ethics debate of the bots for now as they are part of the system and the witnesses don't seem to have a problem with the bots. Most of them actually run a bid bot.

My Experience

I decided to give them a try as I had accumulated a sizable amount of available SBD, for me at least. I went to https://steembottracker.com/ and looked at which bots were still projected to be profitable. As you can see from this screenshot, @postpromoter wouldn't be profitable to bid on for this round, but @mrswhale would be if I didn't bid more than 0.25 SBD. This also assumes that additional people don't continue bidding, thus driving down the profitability of all votes for this round.

Steembottracker.com

I found three different bots that still had a considerable amount of profitability left, with as little time left as possible. All three bids were with around 8 minutes left on the bidding round. After transferring the funds, I was in. The round ended and the bots voted on my posts the percentage of the vote I won.

The 1.5 SBD I bid on the vote was 2.15% of the total votes, so that's the percentage of @boomerang's upvote I got.

After all three bots had voted, the total value of my post went from $4.05 to $14.25! That's a substantial increase. However, I paid a total of 3.5 SBD for the votes. Will I end up with more money than I put in?

The Math

I know that @glenalbrethsen likes to geek out with numbers, so hopefully at least he will appreciate this analysis.

I used the bid bots on Day 3 of my post. Over the course of the next 4 days, I watched the projected payout value drop...and drop....and drop. Remember how I said that the value was $14.25? Yeah, well it ended up paying out at $10.74. So was it worth it?

Value with NO Bots

I used the amount that actually paid out on the post as a percentage that the post was worth after the bots voting and got 75.37% as the value it retained. So, if I had NOT used bid bots, I would have expected the above outcome. Not too bad.

Value WITH Bots

However, I DID use the bots, so the value increased even though it dropped to a payout value of $10.74. Of that amount, I got Steem Power worth $4.17 and 4.17 SBD worth $15.91 (assuming a price of $3.82 per SBD). This gives me a total value of $20.08!

The Profitability

I had to pay to get that increase though, so let's take a look at the difference. I paid 3.5 SBD to get the upvotes. Let's just use the same price of $3.82 for SBD as I wouldn't have sold it before, so it would have just been sitting in my account. That means the votes cost me $13.37.

The math isn't totally accurate, because remember the value of the post without bid bots was projected. There's no way to know for sure what it would have been.

According to approximate math, I gained approximately $5.79 in value. My curators got an extra $1.89 too!

Of the $5.79 increase, $2.90 was paid out as Steem Power and I also got 2.9 SBD. Assuming the same, $3.82 price for SBD, it is worth $11.07. Add the value of the SP and I got an additional value of $13.96 for the post at a cost of $13.37.

That means, I made a whopping $0.59 from using bidding bots!!!

Conclusion

It's up to you to decide if that's worth it. I can tell you a few things I did that helped my profitability. If I had not done them, I likely would have lost money.

1. Wait as late as you can until using the bid bots. Many bots limit their voting to 3.5 days from post creation in order to be compliant with a certain Upset Kitty. By voting as late in this process as possible, it reduces the amount of time that the payout can depreciate as certain factors reduce it. (Too much to get into on this post. Just know it normally goes down.)
2. Bid as late as you can in the round. If you bid early in the round it's more likely that people will overvote and there won't be enough value in the vote to cover your cost.
3. Find bots that have a lot of value left. See above. If the value of the bids goes too high, profitability goes down. If you pick on that has almost closed, but has ample bidding space left, you're more likely to get extra for your bid.

There you have it. At these SBD prices, it can be profitable. However, as the price of SBD increases, it decreases the profitability of the votes as some of the value is converted at SP and some is "lost" to curators.

Therefore, the lesson is to BE CAREFUL and very intentional if you choose to use the bid bots. Just because it's there doesn't mean you're going to make money using it. Even if it says it's profitable, nothing in life is guaranteed.

Stay safe! Let me know what you think in the comments.

@themanwithnoname

Please note: Not investment advice. For informational/entertainment purposes only. Use at your own risk. Do your own research.

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- Have you used bid bots?

- What were your results?

- Would you use them again?