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disclaimer: This Guide is not intended to promote or endorse any Steem service or tool that aids in post promotions. I am not affiliated with any upvote bot or upvote service. Any information provided in this guide is intended to be used as a point of reference. It is also not my intention to rock any boats or disrupt any systems in place with this information, but rather to inform other Steemians of concepts they may not be aware of.

Upvote buying (I prefer to call it paid content promotion) is a very controversial topic, especially when done in an abusive manner. By abusive, I refer to people promoting content that is plagiarized or lacking substance.

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The big elephant in the room is the fact that the owners of dedicated upvote bots are profiting greatly, and there is a real conflict of interest when it comes to bot owners willingly combating misuse and abuse.

On the flip side, if upvote bot owners are making a profit but their customers are not (either directly or indirectly), than that upvote service can be deemed useless and even a borderline scam.

Direct profit would be getting more than you paid for from an upvote bot (rarely happens unless you're lucky), and indirect profit would be others seeing your post on a hot or trending list and upvoting because they liked your post. Unless you're willing to spend 100's of SBD to upvote a post, good luck getting your post to the top of the main trending list, and even then there is no guarantee you'll get upvotes from others.

For these reasons I will use smartsteem.com as an example, because users can buy and sell upvotes directly from other users in a mutually beneficial manner. The service currently provides a $2.10 upvote per 1 SBD spent (on upvotes bought for a post that is older than 30 minutes), and this consistent price will make it easier to make calculations.

there is also @minnowbooster service for upvote buying and selling, but that service is not 100% reliable in my experience, and only accepts SBD for upvotes. This is not slander, but merely personal experience. Their system has a flaw that has existed for months where SBD can be eaten. The developers surely know of this design oversight by now, yet it has not been fixed or addressed.

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But let's move on to the heart of this post. Some will tell you that upvote bots are a waste of money. Are they right? After all, it's quite apparent that boosting yourself up on Trending or Hot lists doesn't really help you unless you are at the very top of those lists, and there are people buying upvotes in the $100's of dollars, so why even bother?

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Despite Upvote bots appearing to be a waste of money, they are actually not if the price of Steem is below a certain USD value, and I will show you why.

The Compounding Effect

Let's pretend we're living in a perfect world where your post payout doesn't fluctuate with the price of Steem.

If you don't know what I mean, imagine you write a post and your future payout after upvotes is estimated to be $10.00. You look two days later and the payout says $9.43 but no one has un-voted or downvoted your post. this happens if the 3.5 day average price of Steem has gone down, bringing your post payout down with it. The reverse happens when the 3.5 day average USD price of Steem increases, increasing the payout value of your post before it finalizes. There are possibly other factors involved as well, but I am by no means an expert on the precise mechanisms that determine how your post payout fluctuates exactly.

So I pay 1.000 Steem Backed Dollar (SBD) for upvotes using smartsteem, and get $2.10 worth of upvote(s) on a post where I chose the 50%/50% reward option. When the post finalizes after 7 days and I get my cut, I end up getting 0.788 SBD from that 1 SBD that I originally paid.

How much Steem Power you get depends on the 3.5 day feed price of Steem. See this post for more details.

You may also get liquid Steem as a reward if the supply of SBD is hitting it's hard limit (I believe SBD supply cannot exceed 4% of total Steem supply), and the system gives you some liquid Steem in lieu of SBD.

Overall, even with many reputable upvote bots found on steembottracker.com that have a ROI lower limit in place, you should get back (or almost get back) the value of what you paid in your post reward if you combine the Steem Power and Steem Dollar (and possibly liquid Steem) reward for your post.

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Despite that sounding like you're wasting money just to promote yourself, there's plenty more to this exercise.

After your post pays out, you can then reinvest that 0.788 SBD again to buy more upvotes, which in turn will generate another 0.620 SBD for the next post payout.

Here is a Table to show you how 1 Steem Dollar diminishes over 10 weeks (if using smartsteem @ 1 SBD = $2.10):

week #	SBD Paid	post payout	SBD Returned
0	1.000	$2.10	0.788
1	0.788	$1.65	0.620
2	0.620	$1.30	0.488
3	0.488	$1.03	0.385
4	0.385	$0.81	0.303
5	0.303	$0.64	0.239
6	0.239	$0.50	0.188
7	0.188	$0.39	0.148
8	0.148	$0.31	0.116
9	0.116	$0.25	0.092
10	0.092	$0.19	0.072
Total	4.366	$9.17	3.438

If you look at the Totals in the bottom row, it really shows how much work a single Steem Dollar can do over time. But, through all of that, that Steem dollar slowly disappears. If the 3.5 day average price of Steem is going down during this time, that Steem Dollar will diminish faster. The reverse is true if the 3.5 day average price of Steem is going up.

The point of this exercise is not to show you how to accumulate Steem Dollars, because Steem Dollars are not going to grow by buying upvotes (that's done through day trading or arbitraging). Steem is the real currency, and if you accumulate Steem Power, that Steem Power can be powered down into Steem (converted in equal payments every week for 13 weeks) if you wish.

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So this is where the math gets interesting, because as I pointed out earlier your Steem Power payout is determined by the 3.5 day average price of Steem.

If the price of Steem was $1 USD, and did not fluctuate during a ten week period, you would have earned 3.438 Steem in total (if using smartsteem @ 1 SBD = $2.10). Think about that for a moment. This is why I always get excited when the price of Steem drops, because it means I can generate more Steem Power over time.

Of course, the price of Steem fluctuates constantly on the open market, so the amount of Steem Power you earn over 10 weeks is going to fluctuate as well.

Let's make another Table to show the Steem Power Earned based on different average prices of Steem (if using smartsteem @ 1 SBD = $2.10):

Average Price of Steem over 10 Weeks	Steem Power Earned
$1.00	3.438
$2.00	1.719
$3.00	1.146
$4.00	0.860

As you can see, once the price of Steem reaches $4 USD on the open market, the Amount of Steem Power you are generating per Steem Dollar is diminishing, and would require even more time than 10 weeks to break even and start getting ahead. Of course, you could power down that Steem Power -and buy more SBD with Steem to buy more upvotes and compound those earnings- which would accelerate your gains even faster to a certain extent.

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Remember that it's impossible to predict what the price of Steem will be down the road, so your mileage may vary on how much Steem Power a single Steem Dollar can generate over time. If the price of Steem were to reach $4 USD, you might be better off leasing delegated Steem Power and using your increased voting value in other ways.

Another caveat is that if smartsteem were to decrease or increase the amount of upvote you receive per Steem Dollar, then that too would change the payout. I personally recommend testing as many services as possible, but at present @minnowbooster upvote service is not 100% reliable in my experience, and there is no easy way to get your SBD back when it gets eaten. It's worth mentioning that if you are selling your upvote to these services, you are getting additional SBD in return.

Also of note, there are services such as steemfollower that provide a more organic way of growing, and are worth checking out.

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In conclusion, it is my opinion that upvote bots are an utter waste of money if you are not benefiting from them over time as I have presented here in this post. While some may read and consider what I have presented to be a form of upvote bot abuse, I would remind those people that what I have presented is quite literally the only way in which buying upvotes will benefit you monetarily (if you don't already have hundreds of SBD or Steem to play with to get to the top of the trending list). Always calculate your long term payout with upvote services, because if they're making money and you're not, you're just burning your money.

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I think that about sums things up for this post though.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this guide has been useful.

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For Dummies: How Steem Post Payouts Work

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Want to make money while helping to clean the garbage up on Steem? Report plagiarism, theft, tag abuse, comment spam, post spam, and other Steem abuse that degrades the Steem Platform to @steemcleaners with their reporting tool. If you provide good evidence, they will investigate and deal with the abuser. A week or two later they usually reward you in Steem Power. It's a win-win for everyone, just don't abuse the abuse reporting tool itself.

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Want to grow your steem power faster?
try smartsteem
and steemfollower

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Tip Jar:

Dogecoin DDizpbLrYzFNEZtEVvUXo8kKBKu3K7yLry

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As always; good luck, good wealth and good health to everyone on Steemit. Stay positive towards others and help the community grow. Thank you for reading and sharing. Comments are always welcome.