UpVote bots - Do they work?

I have been experimenting extensively with up vote bots over the past two weeks on Steemit. These are very commonly used on the platform nowadays and are a way for minnows and dolphins to achieve higher author rewards on the posts that they produce. The concept is quite simple. You send an amount of SBD to the account for the particular bot that you wish to use, and you then receive an upvote that should be greater in value than the amount of SBD that you used to purchase it with. In its simplest sense you are paying for votes. This begs the question, are these bots profitable? I have done some analysis of the results that I have achieved over the past week and will share my findings in this post.

Whilst researching this post I came across a very useful website http://steem.supply/

This website allows you to track your upcoming payouts from Steemit. It takes into account current exchange rates to estimate a dollar value for the rewards which you will receive for any posts that you have made in the past seven days. The information used to do my calculations has been sourced from this site. I need to emphasise that I am not a coder and therefore the analysis that follows is empirical only, and based solely on what I’ve spent and what I expect to receive.

There have been some articles posted recently stating that up vote bots are no longer profitable. My opinion on this issue is that the current bots were designed on the assumption that one SBD should be worth approximately one US dollar at all times. The formulas and algorithms that the bots use to calculate their payouts are based on this assumption. Anyone who follows the price of Steem and SBD however knows that over recent weeks the price of SBD has appreciated significantly and is now worth significantly more than one US dollar. At the time of writing on 31 December 2017, Bittrex lists the price of one SBD as USD $7.14 whilst the price of Steem is approximately USD $2.76. The fact that SBD have appreciated so significantly in recent weeks has greatly affected the profitability of upvoting bots.

So are they still profitable?

My own experience in the past seven days has been as follows. Over the past week I have posted six individual posts and have used a number of up vote bots in an attempt to increase the payout from these posts. My total spend over the past seven days has been 65.8 SBD. My projected author rewards flowing from these posts is the equivalent of 68 SBD. Please note that the website http://steem.supply/ converts both your SBD and Steem power payouts into an equivalent SBD amount.

So at first glance my efforts have been profitable to the amount of 2.2 SBD. This calculation does not take into account however, the fact that some of the rewards which I have received have been organic rewards generated from people who have up voted my post on the basis of valuing the content. It also does not take into account the fact that I belong to a number of Steemit communities such as the Minnow Support Project, which also upvote your posts as a reward for being a member of these communities. I also upvote my own posts and have therefore expended some of my voting power to increase the value of my rewards. Once you take these factors into account I think it’s fair to say that the amount of money that I’ve invested in up vote bots in the past seven days has not been returned to me in rewards.

So the answer to my initial question is no, upvote bots have not been profitable for me in the past seven days. They are also certainly not as profitable as they claim to be, with most bots claiming to give you a return of somewhere between 150% and 250% of your investment. I attribute this largely to the current discrepancy between the value of Steem and SBD. It’s important to note that the price of SBD has been falling steadily over the past week, so it is possible that the situation is self-correcting and if the value of SBD continues to decrease over time, then the bots in question will become more profitable again. Currently however I think it’s fair to say that based on my experience up vote bots don’t work, if all you are hoping to achieve is a profitable return on your investment.

Despite the fact that these bots are not profitable on raw numbers, I still think they are valuable for minnows and dolphins to use for a couple of other reasons.

Firstly, they allow significantly greater visibility of your posts. Other Steemians are much more likely to look at a post with five or $10 worth of existing upvotes than a post that has a very low upvote amount. This may encourage them to read your post and potentially upvote it if they see value in it. There are also Steemians who will opportunistically attempt to up vote on high-value posts simply to share in the reward pool. The greater the reward pool attached to your post the greater the chance that these opportunists will also upvote you.

I’ve also seen a significant increase in my reputation score since using these bots. This may purely be coincidental, as I have been posting more frequently lately than I did when I initially joined Steem, however there is been a definite increase in reputation over the past week to 10 days. I believe that the fact that I am posting higher-value content, which is receiving more of votes and more comments as well as more page views, is directly contributing to the acceleration in my reputation score. My number of followers has also increase significantly.

So despite the fact that most vote bots are not currently profitable, I will continue to use them in the short term. My longer-term aim is to build my reputation on Steemit to the point where I can attract sufficient organic votes from readers who value my content, so that I no longer have to pay for votes from these types of services. The increase in followers, visibility of my posts and reputation score is directly contributing to my longer term aim of becoming an influential member of the Steemit community. So while not directly profitable I’m treating my payments to these services as investments in the longer term profitability of my Steem and account. Time will tell whether this was a wise investment.

I think it is also important to note that there are a wide number of bots currently available for minnows to take advantage of. Each of these operates differently and has different pros and cons. I’ve used a large number over the past 10 days and have seen that some are significantly more valuable and useful than others. I do not pretend to be an expert on these services, and therefore I will not name and shame those bots which I have found to be less useful, however three services that I have used and will continue to use regularly are:

• MinnowBooster
• Buildawhale
• Randowhale

Whilst these bots suffer from the same limitations as the others that I’ve described in terms of limited to no profitability they appear, at least based on my experience, to offer the best level of return for your given investment.

If you are minnow looking to obtain a greater visibility for your posts I would also strongly recommend that you check out the following services

• Minnow Support Project
• Qurator

These are online communities that actively support each other’s posts and are a great way to not only get more post views but also build connections with other Steemians who may share your interests, and may be able to provide advice and feedback on the quality of your content. I hope you found this post useful.

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