RE: The great bid bot experiment - ready to cleanse myself of bots!
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[