So you want to run a voting bot?

With the price of Steem at near record-highs and SBDs through the roof, voting bots have been providing very attractive returns and have been drawing lots of attention. Hardly a day goes by now where I don’t get a request from someone about how to start their own voting bot. So rather than have the same conversation with everyone individually, I thought I would make a post about it so everyone can learn what’s involved.

Steem Power

First and foremost, if you want to run a voting bot, it will need to have a good amount of Steem Power. I would recommend 10,000 SP at a minimum, and obviously the more the better. If that sounds like too much, you might also look into delegating to an existing bot that pays out earnings to delegators such as @msp-bidbot, @jerrybanfield, @smartsteem or many others. Be sure to check how much of the earnings are paid out to delegators vs other things.

If you really want to run a bot but don’t have enough SP yourself, the other option is to lease it. You can lease it directly from a whale (although I don’t advise spam-messaging random whale accounts) or try a delegation market like the one on minnowbooster.net.

Please keep in mind that it is currently very difficult to lease any significant amount of SP since it is in huge demand and short supply, so you’ll have to pay very high prices if you’re even able to get it at all.

Setup and Hosting

Once you’ve secured your Steem Power, and decided you don’t want to just delegate to an existing bot (which is really the best option in most cases, in my opinion) then it’s time to set up your bot.

The first thing you will need is a server. I strongly suggest getting a server hosted in an actual data center and not just something you’re running from your home. You can run a micro sized instance on AWS for free for a year, which is what I would recommend.

Now that you have your server set up you’ll need to choose the bot software to run. Most of the bots currently use the “drotto” software created by @inertia which is available here: https://github.com/inertia186/drotto. I am admittedly quite biased when I say that I prefer the Post Promoter software (because I created it!) which you can find here: https://github.com/MattyIce/postpromoter

You’re also more than welcome to create your own software or modify either of the two existing software packages above if you’re so inclined. I would encourage you to make your software open source or submit pull requests to the main repos with your changes so everyone can benefit from them if you go this route.

Anyway, both software packages have some setup instructions in the readme but it will require some general knowledge about server/system setup so, frankly, if you don’t know what you’re doing then you probably shouldn’t be running your own bot.

Bot Hosting as a Service

If you have no idea what I was talking about in the section above, but you really want to have your own bot - don’t worry, there is still a solution for you!

Since the creation of the Post Promoter bot software I’ve encountered many people who either don’t have the technical expertise to run a bot, or just would rather have someone else do it for them, so in a sort of joint-venture between myself and @aggroed we have started a SAAS (Software As A Service) solution for bot hosting.

What this means is that you set up an account, get some Steem Power in it, and we do the rest! Then you can just sit back and collect the earnings. We charge a 5% fee which is automatically deducted after each bidding round and the rest is automatically transferred to an account or accounts of your choice.

We are currently hosting 8 different voting bots with a combined total of more than 2 million Steem Power and we make sure the bots we host are run properly and never miss a vote or a refund.

In Conclusion

Bid bots are a great way for passive investors who don’t have time for manual curation to make a nice return on their investment in the Steem platform. I know of a few investors who have or are considering putting a good bit of money into Steem for this reason, which is an opportunity that’s not available on any other blockchain platforms that I’m aware of.

The best option (in my opinion) is to just delegate SP to an existing bid-bot such as the ones I listed above. Each of those does take a cut of the earnings but if you have a large amount of SP to delegate and want a higher return contact me on https://steemit.chat or on the PALnet Discord.

If you would prefer to run your own bot and you have the technical experience to set up a server and the bot software then go for it! Otherwise feel free to contact me to see if our managed solution is right for you.

Help Support My Projects!

If you would like to support my projects and/or my ideas and vision for the future of the Steem platform, I would greatly appreciate your witness vote. To cast your vote you can:

• Go here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses
• Find “yabapmatt” in the list (currently #38) and click the ^ vote icon
• Use Steem Connect to vote for me as a witness
• Or Use Steem Connect for proxying your witness votes to me