The great bid bot experiment - ready to cleanse myself of bots!
Its been one week of using upvote bots and resteem bots to ‘promote’ my blog. It has been an interesting week but I am now ready and eager for my bot free week as part of the great bot experiment
Some statistics from week one
During the last week I published 6 posts that I upvoted with bidbots (between 1 and 5SBD per post), for a total of 13.5SBD - that is a lot for a minnow like me! It will be interesting over the next week as the payouts come in to see how profitable using these bots has been! Looking at my statistics it seems the bots themselves have performed quite poorly - all but one of them ended with a negative ROI (according to Steembottracker). The worst performing was a ROI of negative 13.29%, and the best was a positive ROI of 12.83%. The average ROI was -2.6%
A big part of the struggle to gain a positive ROI currently will be because of the recent surge in price of STEEM (this surge means people become more active, and more people are creating accounts). This can be confirmed by checking out the daily stats created by @penguinpablo - over the past week there has been an uptrend in votes being made and comments as well. More people using Steemit = more competition for the bidbots = lower ROI.
How does using bots affect the effort you put in?
What this week has also made me aware of and pay more attention to is peoples payouts, and whether they were organic or paid for. I follow a few people who write excellent content and don't seem to use bots, and this shows that you can do well on Steemit without the use of bots!
Resteem bots
Before the experiment I thought resteem bots were a great way to boost your following and get more eyes on your content. I have noticed a few more people coming to check out my posts because of these resteem bots but I have been checking out their profiles and in general they aren't the type of people who will end up engaging with your content long term - alot of them are mass followers, often following 10k+ accounts! So they may see your 1 post and even upvote it the chances of them being active followers is slim.
After reading an article last week about the poor quality of followers of the resteem bots I did some digging and looked randomly at some of their followers - the majority of the ones I looked at were inactive or bots!
Summary
Using upvote bots has in general been a negative ROI experience (according to steembottracker) and has had an effect on how much effort I am putting into my posts. I think that using resteem bots is pretty much a waste of time, effort and money - you would be better to spend more time engaging with and commenting on content you enjoy!
So, on to week two of my experiment - no paid bid bots and no resteem bots, starting with this post. It will certainly be an interesting week!
use @proffit bot for positive ROI , minimum + 1%
Great post mate. It's a really tricky subject, but I started using bots a few months ago and overall it's worked out quite well, but I think timing has a lot to do with it. I've noticed if I get my bids in early in the day before the US has woke up, but as the east is winding down then I can just about get a positive ROI, not factoring in curation rewards. Often with the curation rewards factored in, I'm down but some of my followers will have also benefited from it so I'm happy with that.
I used to be of the opinion that it's gaming the system, unfair etc. however I came to realise that unfortunately that is just how it currently works, so if I wanted to get views I'd need to do something. It was quite spirit-breaking to put hours of effort into a post, and not even get a dozen views. Slight tangent here, but am I the only one who can't see page views anymore? Why Steemit would remove that metic boggles my mind.
Some of the bots are better than others, with my personal favourites being @jerrybanfield, @therising and @postpromoter. There's also @thundercurator and @treeplanter who I tend to use on every post, along with resteemit.
I view it as "promotion" these days, as creators we're in competition for views. I'll put the same amounts on as you, 0.5SBD - 5SBD depending on how much time and effort I've put in to that post.
Someone recommended to me a little while ago that it's best to wait 24 hours before putting bots on, to increase your chance of getting curated. So far, I haven't really noticed any difference, other than you'll get a few more upvotes around the 30 minutes mark if the total is <= 5.
Unfortunately, too many people abuse this system, as people tend to do, so it's not working as it should. I check the details tab on steembottracker and there are posts with 50+SBD on them, and they are utter garbage. Maybe if your reputation limited how much you could put on, so you need to earn trust in order to put the big money on. I dunno.
Sorry, this became longer than I intended!
I didnt even think about the time of the day and how that would have an effect on ROI! I am starting to think that I shouldnt be supporting the bots and making them stronger and stronger - but then again im so insignificant to make a difference! Its a nicer feeling to make a couple of dollars organically than to see my post at $20 when most of that was paid for....
I should look into Treeplanter.... The Rising has always done fairly well for me...
Yeah In general I dont buy upvotes for shorter content or if im sharing music - I dont think this will lead to more views, only certain topics such as crypto, travel, steemit etc...
Yeah will be intersting this week to see if I get any action from Curie hahaha.. I always wait about an hour or so for the upvote then I can upvote it to the 'hot' page with a bit of luck.
Yeah sometimes I have a look at the content paying 50SBD and I agree its rubbish alot of the time.
I think there should be a limit per day/week for everyone across all bots - so maybe 10SBD a day or maybe even limit it to allow only a maximum of 2 or 3 bot purchaes per week so you have to use it only for your best content[
@conradt sound like you had a similar experience to me, I've gone BOT free and yes the returns are much smaller but hard earned and every cent seems so much more precious. Totally agree with your comments on the types of followers you get as well, I'd rather have a low but engaging following than a high absent one. Thanks for sharing 👍
Yeah I am starting to think I will go the bot free path but will be interesting to compare this week profit wise with last week when I used bots.
Im trying to figure out how to analyse my followers to illustrate this- how many are inactive/bots/mass followers etc.... sad that althought I have 600+ followers I can probably name around 20 that actively engage with my content
I use the minnowsupport bot and the steembasicincome service as default usually and I started using treeplanter too (I like it helps plant trees!). I never seem to get a decent ROI on other bots but I haven't used a method or scientific approach. Thank you for doing the research it helps a lot.
Yeah I will be using Minnowsupport bot even during my bot free week - I think that is different as it 1) its only a small upvote, which wont make it to trending and 2)there are some rules in place where they blacklist people who abuse the bot (I looked!)
WIll be interesting to share as they payouts roll in how profitable this last week has been!
Do you have the steembasicincome too? Just curious if you like it or not
Yeah I have it someone sponsored me :)
Yeah it is nice to get upvoted on every post ! Do you have it ?
Yep sure do! It sounds silly but that one guaranteed upvote makes it less tempting to use a bot just for the sake of not having a 0.0 number... I know I know but it's psychologically at least positive :)
I know exactly how you feel mate!
So far this last couple of days has been nice with no bots! I think some people see you have upvoted with a bot and are less likely to upvote themselves - it also allows more oppurtunity for manual curations such as @curie etc....
I will be interested in seeing the outcome of this experiment.
Following and up-voted !
Thanks!
useful information! I just read the post from @acesontop explaining about the weight of the vote, a mystery for me till now. Thank you John y upvote and restreem!
Thanks for reading :)
something change recently went from 10 to 20 cent payouts on posts to 2 cents and price has come back too.
Not sure about why that would be @arkstrikle.....
I'm just starting with a bot today for the first time. It looks interesting. I DON'T want to become part of the greater corruption/too many bots problem, so I have selected very carefully!
Yeah it is interesting! Its a very complex topic with lots of differing views and opinions!
Reply to my last blog post everytime you make a blog post and I will upvote and resteem it for free to my 36,000+ followers. @a-0-0
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by conradt from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.