"It’s not healthy to attach yourself emotionally in a special love/hate-relationship with - well - basically a computer program."
It is decidedly so.
I have been somewhat reluctant to use bots because I rather lose money instead of gaining it. Of course, visibility is great, and using them is kind of an investment to attract readers. But with only some SBD I think twice about doing so.
I keep releasing some short pieces and commenting on other articles to raise my reputation and accumulate more SBD. And when I have a decent amount in my eyes I will use some for my SP and perhaps SBD for the bigger bots when I release longer articles.
Generally, I think the discussion about self-voting is superfluous. The only "danger" is that we upvote ourselves with the fear of being pillorized by others, hence feel guilt. There is no guilt! Do it with Self-Love and stick to it and there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty for...
I also started with only 10SBD for bots and now I got about 30SBD every other day. It works, when you just use the bots with at least a positive ROI, which in the end (and when SBD prices are going down during the week until payout) will still make it slightly negative, but when prices go up during the week (which may actually happen someday 😉) your ROI will increase.
Of course it makes no sense to do this out of greed.
Thanks for your remarks, that I appreciate very much!