My Experience Buying an Upvote and My Conclusions
About a week ago, I bought an upvote.
I wanted my piece to shine – to be read, enjoyed, commented on, and nurtured. I figured the way to do that was to give it a little traction. I didn’t have a ‘bad experience’ and I didn’t get robbed (maybe there was a miscalculation with the amounts, but nothing I would complain about, because I am not a complainer).
So, here is my analysis of how my post performed using an upvote:
First, let’s look at the before picture – 
At 10:24 PM my post was worth $2.87. 
With that evaluation, I could expect $1.06 in STEEM power and $1.06 in SBD (Steem based dollars). Remember we get about 37.5% in SBD and 37.5% in STEEM power, that is where I get these figures. I purchase the upvote about 3 hours later and now my post is worth a little over $7.
And this shot here shows there were no votes in between: 
I end up spending 2.487 on the upvote worth $4.15ish at the time. I manage to get a couple more upvotes after using the bot, but the value keeps dropping due to [reasons]. My final vote comes a few days ago at 8PM. At that time, my post is worth just under $7.
This morning I received my payout from the post. 2.561 SBD and 2.841 STEEM power. 
Not bad, right – something like $5.12 in rewards – definitely worth the $2.487 that I spent, right?
Not so fast. My post had some value when I bought that vote. That value remained through the end, because no one removed their upvotes. Assuming that value would have diminished a bit, as my post’s value diminished, it is hard to say where it would have ended, but I think we can safely say it would have stayed above $2.4. The post ended at $6.812 when it paid out. If the upvote brought me $4.412 in pre curation value, and cost me $2.487 SBD – is that a win? If my post finished at $2.40 – I would have received $0.90 SBD and about 1 STEEM power and I would have had my $2.487 SBD. That would leave me with $3.387 SBD and 1 STEEM power. In reality I spent $2.487 SBD so I netted -$0.826 SBD and 1.841 STEEM power. I get my negative figure by subtracting the $.9 and my investment of $2.487 from the payout. In the end – the vote purchase was a positive over a non-purchase by about 85 cents. That value is locked in STEEM power, but it was a net gain.
What quickly becomes apparent, is that the upvote service fared much better. They made $2.487 from the initial purchase and 0.68 STEEM power from the curation, or about three dollars.
I suppose one could call this transaction a win-win, right? For transparency I want to highlight 2 points:
- I never made the trending page. As a newer account, my purchase wasn’t enough to make my post trend, so I never got the big rewards you get from trending.
- I didn’t buy the upvote right away. I tried to buy an upvote right away, but the amount I tried was sold out. I had to wait about 12 hours, which may have affected things. I don’t know.
Even though one could label this a win-win, at this point, I don’t think I want to buy upvotes again. It doesn’t make sense for me financially. I didn’t lose money but I didn’t make much either. I prefer the organic approach. Meeting people in discords and reading/commenting on other’s posts. This is, after all, a social platform. For those that don’t know about steemit discords – I am here to tell you that there are a lot of discords devoted to the steemit platform.
I have to admit that I didn't understand the maths part, but the essential idea that it is better to create good content and interact with people, that i got. And I agree, there is much more benefit in the organic way, not only financially, but you never know which new friends you can make
Yes, thank you - there are more than financial benefits to interacting with others. I have found a place to work on my writing, a good cause to support, and met quite a few people that have inspired me to do my best for this platform. I am glad you mentioned this.
I know what you feel! People who is really interested in who you are, what do you have to share with them, people who is looking for the real person behind, not the fake image one can create of themselves on social media. That has no price.
You, sir, have done the Lord's work. You tracked, tested and thought it through and derived valid numbers. You make a cogent point and you do so in a practical manner that might catch people who would have otherwise ignored you if you just moralized at them about bots so to speak. This hits where it hurts. Good show.
Thank you. I wanted to share my experience and I am flattered by all the wonderful things you said. I hope to continue to have genuine interactions with people and learn from them as I journey here on steemit.
Interesting analysis of ur experience, i also experimented with purchasing an upvote a few weeks back. I did it twice at 2 different amounts and came to a very simialr conclusion.
I did profit slightly, just found it was more of an illusionary gain & also (agreeing with ur point) rather have a more organic build for rewards and spectators etc..
Yes. Thank you for sharing your experience. I know that the organic experience will be a long process, and I am okay with that. I hope steemit is around for a long time - it is built on a fantastic premise.
Thank you @steemitgraven29 for putting so much work into this little experiment, as you've said its clear that there is an ROI, but maybe its not so clear to the new users what the ROI is.
Granted, we cannot expect most people to sit there and brake it down like you have, which is why I'm not only giving you props, but a resteem.
Thanks for sharing
Thank you! I just wanted to share my experience and my conclusions. I am glad that someone took the time to read them!
Nice post I'm glad people are talking about it, I do not like to use them but found when I don't that it will be literally one or two people that see it, myself included, lol! It gets extremely frustrating if I spend hours on a long, good post (photos usually) and makes me want to quit Steemit when no one would see my posts. I see so many others with high posts but have used bots for upvotes which I thought was crazy and didn't want to but have to in a way. I used to use the promote ($1) I don't think it ever worked well. I do love Discord and know some day I won't need to use the voting bots anymore. I do love Steemit at times and would love to see it grow in a positive way. :-)
I would love to see it grow in a positive way too. I hope to make it grow by working on making real connections. It will take time - it can't happen overnight, and even if my early posts don't do so well, that's okay. They'll always be there - on the blockchain if anyone wants to read them.
Well this is what people fails to see with those services.
You get the crumbles of the cake.
Thank you. You are an excellent witness. Keep up the good work.
Thanks man i do what i can !
I've stopped using especially "auction" bots, after devaluation of a post I don't feel it helps, sometimes it does closer to payout but overall is sort of 'blah", good post :)
Yes. I will spend my time focusing on networking with the people I meet.
Man I kind of assumed this was what happened with most vote bots, but never thought about tracking upvoted using steemd.
I'll have to try this and see, which I'm assuming is the case, if I get similar votes.
Yes. Please let me know if my numbers are off, or if you see a similar trend. Repeating this experiment will help verify or disprove the result and either is good.
I don't have hard numbers to back it up right now. If I get some hard numbers I'll let you know, but it definitely feels right from my bot votes.
I bought upvote only 2 times. first with 0.01$ and got upvote worth 0.02$. Second time with 0.02$ and returned back upvote worth 0.04$. After that stopped buying upvote. Now just trying to interact with other peoples.
I like the interacting part. I think I would miss it if I didn't do it. After all, this is a social network.
This is why I don't even bother with the bid bots.
You are an excellent example to follow. Thank you for being a witness here. I appreciate your latest post about helping new users. I found helpful people here early - I consider myself lucky. The more there are the better for the platform as a whole.