Intro

A lot of users are using voting bots - it can be easily seen when you look on the comments section of the posts. But it’s really not easy to determine if it’s worth to use such a bot because users sometimes don’t understand how it works and how much after payout they will get. With this post I will try to answer your questions.

Posts

I decided to use three posts from my Polish account @marszum:

• [01] [Steemit] Głosujące boty i ich opłacalność (część 1 z 2: propozycje i transfery)
• [02] [Książki][Kryptowaluty] Mega okazje na ebooki o bitcoinie, blockchainie i kryptowalutach na Humble Bundle
• [03] Moneta dotarła! Od teraz mam pamiątkę z Euro 2012!

Bots and transfers

In this article I will look into two (well, three) kinds of bots:

• Bidding: bots are voting every X minutes. Users are bidding with SBD transfers for percents of bots’ power.
• Instant: Bots are voting almost instantly. Every X SBD transferred is a certain percent of bots’ power.
• Mention: Bots need to be mentioned. No transfer.

I have transferred minimum required value to every bot. If there were no minimum then I have sent 0,1 SBD.

Bot	Type	My transfer (SBD)
@bellyrub	instant	0,1
@binkley	instant	0,01
@boomerang	bidding	0,05
@booster	bidding	1
@buildawhale	bidding	0,5
@discordia	bidding	0,1
@drotto	bidding	0,001
@khoa	instant	0,1
@lovejuice	instant	0,1
@minnowbooster	instant	3
@minnowhelper	bidding	0,1
@morwhale	instant	0,01
@nettybot	bidding	0,1
@originalworks	mention	0
@polsza	instant	0,5
@steemthat	bidding	0,01
@treeplanter	instant	0,1
@upgoater	instant	0,075

Payouts… or not?

Most people in their statistics show numbers from payouts and that’s all. And it will look like this:

Bot	Post [1]	Post [2]	Post [3]
@bellyrub	0,228	0,228	0,253
@binkley	0,029	0,029	0,006
@boomerang	0,082	0,114	0,172
@booster	1,465	1,098	1,465
@buildawhale	0,998	0,948	0,949
@discordia	0,063	0,079	0,187
@drotto	0,027	0,027	0,000
@khoa	0,000	0,000	0,000
@lovejuice	0,032	0,140	0,178
@minnowbooster	3,860	3,887	3,891
@minnowhelper	0,145	0,237	0,291
@morwhale	0,003	0,004	0,003
@nettybot	0,047	0,169	0,339
@originalworks	0,008	0,008	0,008
@polsza	0,466	0,545	0,554
@steemthat	0,007	0,029	0,029
@treeplanter	0,115	0,110	0,000
@upgoater	0,160	0,028	0,044

Stop for a minute.

Real payouts

That table really gives us nothing since there are some things that should be included. First of all - curation rewards. As you know - users get curation rewards for voting (no more than 25% of payout) so payout value is not what you will get.

Then let’s compare all bots on the same level because there are different values of transfers. The best way is to use the lowest number possible - we can use 0,001 SBD.

There are also bots which vote in groups so it can’t be count only as one user.

Finally - don’t forget about transfers! They were not free and you need to include them in statistics.

All calculations are made only in SBD.

Groups

Let’s start from bots groups. I have found only two of them, but hey, it all counts!

Bot	Supporting accounts
@minnowbooster	@badham, @buildteam, @buildteampot, @changeangels, @coffeedrinker51, @flexcougar, @jamiekensell, @kostronor, @mentionator, @nojo121, @rakkasan84, @raycoms, @resheep, @robofox, @steempact, @steemposter, @traderwhale, @upbloke, @upcroak, @upgoat, @w-inv, @welcomebot
@morwhale	@andystar, @hdmed, @morwhalebonus, @morwhalelife, @rewardshare, @theredshark, @zidfabour

After curation and per 0,001 SBD

After calculating curation for bots and dividing values into 0,001 SBD I came out with those numbers:

Bot	Post [1]	Post [2]	Post [3]
@bellyrub	0,00198605	0,00195831	0,00219143
@binkley	0,00218527	0,00247681	0,00049870
@boomerang	0,00142251	0,00195385	0,00298359
@booster	0,00127637	0,00094404	0,00126721
@buildawhale	0,00173973	0,00163129	0,00164217
@discordia	0,00055211	0,00068350	0,00161714
@drotto	0,01977561	0,02289366	0,00000000
@khoa	0,00000000	0,00000000	0,00000000
@lovejuice	0,00027700	0,00120185	0,00154064
@minnowbooster	0,00102232	0,00111810	0,00109721
@minnowhelper	0,00126115	0,00203601	0,00251517
@morwhale	0,00094078	0,00086818	0,00107308
@nettybot	0,00041368	0,00145666	0,00293239
@originalworks	0,00583213	0,00675754	0,00680747
@polsza	0,00081245	0,00093742	0,00095896
@steemthat	0,00062551	0,00251901	0,00254184
@treeplanter	0,00100140	0,00094783	0,00000000
@upgoater	0,00186422	0,00032176	0,00050893

Now that’s something to compare - let’s have a look on the graph:

But it’s still not what we’re looking for.

No upvotes

I think you have already saw no upvotes from some bots. That’s right:

• @khoa didn’t upvote even once and didn’t return transfers.
• @drotto didn’t upvote third time and didn’t return the transfer.
• @treeplanter didn’t upvote third time and didn’t return the transfer.

Average

Bots have their ups and downs - that’s why I have made three transfers. Average of those three upvotes.

Bot	Average
@bellyrub	0,00204526
@binkley	0,00172026
@boomerang	0,00211998
@booster	0,00116254
@buildawhale	0,00167106
@discordia	0,00095091
@drotto	0,01422309
@khoa	0,00000000
@lovejuice	0,00100650
@minnowbooster	0,00107921
@minnowhelper	0,00193744
@morwhale	0,00096068
@nettybot	0,00160091
@originalworks	0,00646571
@polsza	0,00090294
@steemthat	0,00189545
@treeplanter	0,00064974
@upgoater	0,00089830

Including transfer

Don’t forget about our transfers! So we need to decrease every value with 0,001 SBD:

Bot	Average -0,001
@bellyrub	0,00104526
@binkley	0,00072026
@boomerang	0,00111998
@booster	0,00016254
@buildawhale	0,00067106
@discordia	-0,00004909
@drotto	0,01322309
@khoa	-0,00100000
@lovejuice	0,00000650
@minnowbooster	0,00007921
@minnowhelper	0,00093744
@morwhale	-0,00003932
@nettybot	0,00060091
@originalworks	0,00546571[*]
@polsza	-0,00009706
@steemthat	0,00089545
@treeplanter	-0,00035026
@upgoater	-0,00010170

[*] We can’t decrease from @originalworks because it was free.

Final values

I think that every bot not giving even one upvote should be removed from list. Transferring SBD to them is like a lottery. Also mention bots must be also removed since it can change in any time. So I’m throwing out @drotto, @khoa, @originalworks and @treeplanter.

And the final verdict and the most important table in this post is here:

Place	Bot	Income per 0,001
1	@boomerang	0,00111998
2	@bellyrub	0,00104526
3	@minnowhelper	0,00093744
4	@steemthat	0,00089545
5	@binkley	0,00072026
6	@buildawhale	0,00067106
7	@nettybot	0,00060091
8	@booster	0,00016254
9	@minnowbooster	0,00007921
10	@lovejuice	0,00000650
11	@morwhale	-0,00003932
12	@discordia	-0,00004909
13	@polsza	-0,00009706
14	@upgoater	-0,00010170

Is is worth the spam?

OK, maybe there is something in this but let’s look how comments section of the post looks after “attack of the bots”.

So is it worth to use your post as a trash for comments? With all of this spam it’s hard to discuss about post’s content. Think about it.

Hey, wait, what if bots vote in less than 30 minutes?

There is a rule (in simple words) that voting before 30 minutes after posting gives more to author and less to voter. The quicker the upvote the bigger proportions for curation reward. So is it possible to use bots as fast as possible to have bigger rewards? It’s not that easy! I have all time data for you.

I counted times from transfer to upvote - in format hh:mm:ss.

Bot	Post [1]	Post [2]	Post [3]
@binkley	00:00:12	00:05:39	00:08:30
@bellyrub	02:58:24	01:18:09	02:20:21
@boomerang	02:10:48	02:14:57	01:32:03
@booster	05:06:39	00:53:24	00:33:15
@buildawhale	00:51:36	01:14:33	00:08:24
@discordia	01:16:15	01:10:51	00:15:15
@drotto	00:01:09	00:00:45	n/a
@khoa	n/a	n/a	n/a
@lovejuice	01:41:57	01:20:15	01:40:03
@minnowbooster	00:01:48	00:01:12	00:00:30
@minnowhelper	01:46:18	02:09:51	01:37:12
@morwhale	00:00:39	02:09:57	00:00:33
@nettybot	03:24:30	03:43:12	03:23:48
@polsza	00:00:54	00:00:54	00:00:57
@steemthat	01:05:27	00:00:21	00:00:21
@treeplanter	00:08:00	03:29:09	n/a
@upgoater	02:05:45	07:13:33	02:50:00

• first transfer to @bellyrub returned with info: Bellyrub had a hiccup, please resend your bid. vote for zeartul as witness.
• first transfer to @booster returned with info: Unable to accept bid.

I decided to remove @drotto, @khoa, @originalworks and @treeplanter from graph:

Averages

It’s much easier if we take averages from those times:

Bot	Average
@bellyrub	00:04:47
@binkley	02:12:18
@boomerang	01:59:16
@booster	02:11:06
@buildawhale	00:44:51
@discordia	00:54:07
@lovejuice	01:34:05
@minnowbooster	00:01:10
@minnowhelper	01:51:07
@morwhale	00:43:43
@nettybot	03:30:30
@polsza	00:00:55
@steemthat	00:22:03
@upgoater	04:03:06

Do you see that? Only 4 bots made it into first 30 minutes. You can always try to post something directly few minutes before one of bidding bots but what about the rest of them?

Final words

In my opinion it’s not worth to use voting bots. They don’t give as much as everyone thinks and sometimes they don’t even vote. But the worst thing - spam! OMG, I hate those comments in posts. But if you really want to do it:

BEFORE TRANSFERRING ANY MONEY ALWAYS CHECK BOT PAGE IF IT STILL WORKS AND HOW TO ACTIVE IT!