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!