Paid Vote BOTS - WHO / WHEN / HOW MUCH ... THE REALITIES
Since the first paid bid/vote bots emerged in our community months and months ago (not sure the exact number of months anymore, but must be about half a year ago), a lot changed in the bid/vote bot landscape of things!
While in the beginning, only a very few bid/vote bots were around and we had to use a set of different tools to analyse whether or not a bot vote would be profitable or not, now we are supported by very useful tools such as "STEEMBOT Tracker" to inform us on everything such as a listing of bid/vote bots available to us, bid details including the potential earnings for each bot, vote times of each bot and so on. It even gives us information about all the bid and vote details of the last bid/vote round of each available bot.
Disclaimer: in this post I don't give my opinion whether paid vote bots are good or bad for the community; whether you should use them or not; I just give you the realities as they are presented to us.
Anybody using the paid bid/vote bots for self voting can have various reasons to use them. Regardless the fact a bid/vote bot vote will result in a direct profit or not, the user may like to receive and additional vote on its post or comment to:
- Give more Curation Rewards to the Voters of the users post (or comment)
- Try to get into HOT channel to Increase Visibility of the post
- Show Higher Post Values in their BLOG FEED
- To support the Bot Owners
Note: Maybe the user has reasons I didn't mention; Let us know in the comments your reason!
Results of higher post rewards can be:
- Increase the number of votes (auto and manual) > Higher curation rewards, means more revenue for the voter
- Increase the number of followers > More visibility of a user, the chances are increased for the user to be noticed by others driving the potential to those other user to hit the follow button
Note: I never analysed the effects of bit/vote bots other than the direct revenue a bid/vote bot gave. Months and months ago, I posted the results of some tests I executed, but I felt not necessary to include these posts here, since these tests are outdated, pretty much. Also, the "STEEMBOT Tracker" tool gives very good (realtime) information with regard to vote values for all available bots, including those close to their vote window.
Without analysing all the bid/vote bots, or trying to figure out what the exact situation is with the bid/vote bots at each hour of the day, I advise you to take following into account:
- The more bid value, the lower the financial returns
FACT: most bid/vote bots split the vote value based on bid values.
- Be aware of High value bids placed just before the bid/vote window closes.
ADVISE: make your decision to use which bid/vote bot, when, and with what bid value, close to the end of a bid/vote window (the image below shows all bots listed in order of time to closing of bid/vote window, with the bots most close to the end of the bid/vote window on top of the list).
- Often the direct ROI is close to zero
Note: just keep this in mind.
In image below, the bots very close to the end of their bid/vote window, calculated profit/loss are shown by colouring GREEN for expected profit, and WHITE for expected loss.
image: screenshot Steem Upvote Bot Tracker - bid overview of upvote bots
Be careful, bid/vote bots further down the list are all coloured WHITE, although they don't have a calculated LOSS. The exact rule this application uses to decide when to indicate potential profit/loss is unclear. However, you can open the 'DETAILS' window (the blue buttons) of a bid/vote bot to view all the data of a bot, including expected profit/loss based on the bids already placed.
Note: no predictions about future bids are included!
For the bot @boomerang, the 'DETAILS' page is show in image below. The calculated profit/loss based on all bids places in the open window is shown at "Current ROI". Below the general data, a list of all users and their bids is shown. In case you've place a bid, your username + post URL + all the details should be in this list.
image: image: screenshot Steem Upvote Bot Tracker - @boomerang upvote bot bid details
This morning I took the screenshots shown above and at the specific time I took these screenshots, the @boomerang bid/vote bot was at the end of its bid/vote window, shown by the NEXT VOTE time at 00:00. The details of @boomerang shows us 4,66% ROI, meaning in this particular bid/vote window for this particular bid/vote bot, anyone who placed a bid would make a 4,66% profit, assuming 25% of the vote value would be for curation rewards. The reality could be less than 25% of the total post rewards are paid out as curation rewards, benefiting the rewards to the author; This depends on many factors! Therefore you shall view this data as the worst case scenario in terms of profit/loss (note: I assume you have the "include 25% curation" option turned "ON").
When using this application, please be aware of a couple of configurable parameters:
- Currency: You can set currency to various values, including Steem, SBD, US Dollar and (pending) Post Value. They are all different.
- In/Exclude Curation rewards in analyses: My advise is to include curation rewards, since maximum 25% of the vote value given by the bot, is for curation payout, not for the rewards to the author of the post or comment.
I'm looking forward to your feedback
Do you use Vote Bots? And do you use them often?
What are the reasons for you to use a vote bot?
Were you aware of this bid/vote bot tracker application?
Do you use this or other bid/vote bot tracker applications?
Coincidence...?
Today I decided to do an experiment after I saw a post on trending that seemed a bit strange. After further investigation I noticed that this specific post made trending by using upvote- & betbot services.
Getting there seemed to have cost the member about 210 SBD. While the potential payout made it almost close to 500.
So I looked in the wallet of that account and saw indeed that it used these services. Actually more than once and it seemed to work.
Curious to see how this would work I decided to mimic the way the trending member did it. But with only 6.5% of the SBD that was used by that account.
Currently I am still below the amount of SBD I used, but just two, of the six in total, bots upvoted. One had a minimum of 3.5 SBD so I used another service for that.
According to my estimated calculations final payout would result in about two to three time the invested SBD.
Seems that those who are willing and able to use hundreds of SBD are actually able to get all the way to the trending page. At least, so it seems, maybe with the help of the bot tracker.
Do not know what to think of it yet. Feels kind of like an eatn aint cheatn thing.
I tested months ago with pushing posts into HOT channel, with almost no results, maybe a couple of additional votes, but generally not really much more then a couple of cents in addition.
Now, TRENDING channel may be different. Interestingly, a couple of weeks ago I had a post Voted for and ReSteemed by @dsound. That post stayed for weeks the number one post in @dsound BLOG FEED, and stayed for days in dsound tag TRENDING on position 1, and was obviously for some time pisiton number 1 in #dsound HOT. Also, that post took number one position in general HOT channel, and I think it reached top 30 or 20 in general TRENDING channel for a little while. That post is still collecting votes, mostly low SP holders, these users who tend to vote for high value posts. I'm pretty sure this post is still collecting, because it is still very visible due to @dsound being a very visible account and tag.
For the post I made 2 days ago I used six voting bot services. And so far it looks like it is going to result in 100% extra payout. Although it might still drop some over the next couple if days.
Wonder where it is on the hot level as I do not expect it to go trending. :-)
But when I have a few hundred SBD to spare I might give it a trending shot. Which is probably never, hahaha.
But it is interesting to see how this can actually make a post trending, just by buying in heavy and taking a big risk.
Yeh, very interesting indeed how posts can be manipulated wrt visibility. I guess, very much the same as in life outside Steem/Steemit and the blockchains :) Through tests in the past, sometimes I made a slight profit, sometimes not. Best to determine whether you made a profit or not, is to check author rewards. When I tested, I recorded pending payout value on post just before the bot vote, and immediately after bot vote and recorded again the pending post payout at post payout time. The factor of difference I applied to the difference between the pending post payout as a result of the bot vote. Such way of calculation removes all the post rewards provided by other votes + it gives the best way to determine profitability of the paid vote.
Also keep in mind, when paying a bot in SBD, your profit percentage in terms of USD, or even SBD becomes less as long as SBD is has a higher value then 1 US Dollar when looking at Post Pending Rewards (what most people do actually). This due to how the SBD part of the post rewards is calculated at payout time. When SBD is stuck in a post for 7 days, and SBD becomes lets say 50% less valuable in terms of USD at the exchanges, one could have better sell the SBD for USD instead of investing into a post. I have the feeling, many users forget that part.
Looks like the SP I will get is the actuall plus in my experiment. And as I did send not enough SBD in one case, that is not going to be refunded by the particular bot I think I'll leave it at this experiment. :-)
But if enough SBD invested it can be used to make it to the trending page. Kind of advertisement I guess.
I guess indeed kinda Promoting posts, but then in a channel with more visibility then PROMOTED channel and SBD to entrepreneurs instead of burned. Wait for the payout to know how the experiment turned out.
There is a new function now where you can see what the potential payout will give in SBD and SP. Still looking good.
How did your test turn out?
Cool! You got the right bot and time window!
Hi Edje! Thank you for another great article and yes I used bots in the beginning because I was reading and listening to a video from @joeparys and my intention was only to test it out about curiosity and see how it works.
The Result is like in a casino. At the end "The bank always wins". people who using bots now and think they can make a profit will see that the money what they made is melted down until the payout so everything gone. Also having bots message in the comment section is nothing what looks good. We have around 35000 social media followers and if I post a photo on Instagram for example. The first 20 likes are all bots followed by generic comments. We got contacted by "social media agencies" every two weeks who want to boost our IG Account by engaging with followers by liking or commenting? Engaging with generic comments?? Really a bot! That is not the way I would ever go but many people just do it and it sucks.
I love to keep it real with real people.
Personally, I tested the bots here @Steemit but not more and if people find me organically and engage with me than I is this amazing. I rather have 100 real people than 100000 fake people.
I hear you, and I have very similar opinion on REAL versus FAKE :)
Some manual curators and even auto voters may not like the author to call in vote bots, therefor the author may miss revenue from those users. Then again, with high value on the posts, it may attract auto voters since their curation rewards are increased. It is very difficult to anlayses all the net effects of using bots versus not using them. It would be very interesting to see the results of paid vote bots, when these vote bots would not post a comment, hence not triggering those users who will not give their vote to a post when paid votes are casted to the post :)
I'm new to the community, and I try to read a lot of those who already have time here. I read your publication carefully, the comments of others and yours, and sincerely I want to thank you, since it was very useful, including what you think about the auto vote. For now I will continue researching the use of Bots, in order to make the decision in the future. Congratulations, I enjoyed reading you. I learned many new things.
Thanks for reading and your comment. Glad the post was of help for you.
As a follower of @followforupvotes this post has been randomly selected and upvoted! Enjoy your upvote and have a great day!