Steem Experiment: No Bots vs Botted
Hello guys,
It is no secret that I dislike bots as we're in a platform meant for manual curation and people end up skipping it in great part thanks to them.
However, I do know bot makers are taking strides to control their quality guidelines and so on. Still, I feel like this would be way more interesting without these entities, even though I'm pretty sure that is an Utopia that can never happen.
Finally, I've used bots for promotion in nearly all of my posts because - let's face it - you're playing at an handicap if you don't.
However, something happened that lead me to make an experiment.
More on that below...
The Experiment: One Week Without Bots, Why?
Well, if you have seen the amount on my payouts decrease from close to $100 to $20, it's because I stopped using bots.
Why?
What Happened?
Nothing situational, just the fact that with close to 2000 followers I think I can maybe switch to no botting now, since I think I have a considerable size of followers already.
Granted it will hamper my growth in follower numbers as I'll reach less people... but what is its impact?
What will I discover in this week with no bots... will I ever return to them?
It's up to the results.
Bots aren't profitable in their vast majority, they serve to promote your content, so I may actually get more SP out of my posts with no botting - but only the experiment will tell.
My First Experiment with no Bots:
I already posted twice with no bots promoting it, and the results were as you would have expected - only my hardcore closest followers have upvoted.
Trust me, I know who you guys are and I love you for it... I always check who gives to me so I can give in return, so I have the numbers right here... however, those aren't the numbers I'm going to compile in this experiment.
In this experiment I'll check:
- The SBD and SP totals of my organic and bot pumped reach;
- The SBD and SP net profits from both of those posting ways;
- The difference in folloqwe influx
...And some other miscellaneous things you'll see when the week is done.
In Conclusion:
In conclusion, I'm looking to see if it's worth it to use bots when you're an established author.
I know that for newbies, it's worth it due to how even if you don't net a profit you'll more followers out of it, but I aim to see if it keeps on being worth it when the numbers are bigger, or if it is better to just take the rewards as net profit and grow your SP numbers.
This experiment may not mean something for lots of you who are still beginning, but it will give you a fresh look on botting and maybe help you out once you grow up.
Cheers
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Hey man, I was looking at your page but no blog posts there... when do you start posting yourself?
Hi, would you have suggestions about the rewards?
Thanks for your attention and answer.
All the best, Jean
Hi sorry I saw your reply only now. My idea was unsted of paying bots to promote post, the money could be use to reward the followers directly by creating a consest or a draw lot something like that.
It is always a good idea to orgaize contests, in my experience, it still requires to make some promotion on them to be found by the audience and have a really inpactful and accroching title and picture. As you can see my last 50 SBDs contest did not brought much participants until now Probably because it was not well presented either. I wish you good luck and please, do not hesitate to share when you have a contest, I'll resteem with pleasure, all the best, Jean ;-)
Sure I’m still searching for the perfect balance I will start to post very soon, and please follow me for more updates.
I haven't used any voting bots and don't intend to. Somehow organically I've grown my number of followers from around 300 at the beginning of 2018 to almost 1600 now - but, most of them never vote or interact with me. I'm not really sure why/how I get so many followers without using bots, and why they don't interact with me at all, but, it is encouraging to see numbers growing on Steemit instead of shrinking like on fascistbook.
You are clearly doing 'something' right. :c)
I am guessing that there are a lot of art-lovers on Steemit. ^_^ 'shrugs'
While this confuses me, I do know enough that I'll similarly not be perusing of bots if I can help it.
Well, one post in Trending is all it takes, but we'd have to research.
Yeah good job on you growing 1500 in 2 months! :D
Pretty well done.
I agree, and Im curious to see how this will turn out.
super good job! You have no idea how? I comment on people's stuff until my fingers hurt, but I have 373 since my first intro post on Feb 1. I like interacting with people though because I've made some cool friends already that way. Some I already got to meet in real life, so it's worth my fingers hurting a little haha.
I'm super thankful for every single person following me. hmm I should probably tell them that lol
Same I think i only use bots that promise returns.
Like @tipu
@steemlike
@bumper
@upvotewhale
@qustodian
smartsteem.com
But i love @randowhale idk if everyone get massive returns but once i sent 1 sbd and got a $6 upvote. :)
Too bad you can almost never catch it awake... randowhale that is.
This is an interesting one. I didn't use a lot of bots but I had some support from a friends who has a lot of SP and his votes got my posts some visability and followers. He transfered his SP to minnowbooster for a couple of weeks and I really felt is. I still got some votes from followers in my niche but you don't get up there in the hot lists anymore and you feel it.
I'm curious how your experiment will turn out. I understand why everyone uses bots but I'm not a fan. It promotes good content but also allows abuse and a lot of visability to bad content.
Yeah, then there's the whole discussion of - if quality posters stop using bots, then trash posters will be the ones to rise.
What do you think of that?
Cheers
I'm glad you did this experiment because I wanted to do it as well. I agree it's worth it for newbies to get the exposure! Even if it's not profitable. I used them and it wasn't profitable (like you said), but I DID feel like more people saw my stuff, so just getting comments instead of crickets was worth it to me.
What did surprise me with your experiment is that with 2k followers and no bots, your posts are only about $26. You'd think that it would be way more with 2k followers.
That's super interesting to me...I wonder how many followers you need to where bots are just not needed at all? Or if there is something else to the formula?
Stuff like this fascinates me...trying to crack the code and optimize platforms and stuff. I'm a lil' late...but upvoted anyway.
Glad you shared
Yeah, there's more to it.... as you see, 2K followers net me $20, but a whale friend voting can crush that... that's the key really, get whale friends or wait for your followers to grow.
Hmm thanks yeah that's kind of what I figured cause it makes a huge difference
This was interesting, I'm going to follow your experiment!
Been looking a little into bots myself, but am not so eager to use any even though I need more visibility.
Yeah, I was like that as well, then I concluded I was playing chess with less pieces than everyone else.
Now, Im trying to stop it again because I feel like I can stand on my feet and compensate that handicap-
Thank you for this post about using bots. I experimented the last days with them and I am interested in the opinion of other steemians who have more experience. 😃
What is yours?
I don't have an opinion yet. I tried some and now I am reflecting about the topic with other steemians like you.
Delighted to see this experiment. There is a lot to be said about using bots to establish social proof on your post. I dont use them and was thinking of starting.
Now that i am dabbling with post types other than data, i have taken a massive hit as its not what people have followed me for. But im very much on the fence, hoping my rep score will help build a wider audience and will help with the visibility.
I will be following ur progress on this. Nice idea
hey @paulag, do you use Discord (you use utopian, so i guess yes).
This Spiritualmax post started to give me some ideas of how to test this... Mind if i hit you on Discord to propose a model for this testing?
Sure @phgnomo hit me up with a DM. My name is the same
Yeah, I am very curious to review my findings afterwards.
And the fact that you took a massive hit only shows you you're readership is active and engaged which is definitely a good thing, otherwise if they were the sort of crew that votes just because or doesn't read or engage with the content you wouldn't notice.
That's a win on my book.
By the way, my analysis at the end will probably suck according to your standards, you're one of the blockchain's top analysts.
But it'll show you my opinion on this at least.
Cheers
After reading this post what I got clear is we have to use bots for getting maximum attention. Can you tell what should be the course of action for niewbie for use of bots and which are the best bots.
Best bot for newbies has to be @bumper, for bigger people smartsteem.com
I think this post is quality and I actually just found it in the new section, because I felt it stood out.
So I think manual curation can and should be possible. Else steemit is not a social blog site, and just turns into a gamified blockchain experiment run by computers.
Everybody talks about getting their posts noticed, but if you pay for that then you're just trying to shout louder than the next guy.
And you might lose sight of why you're blogging in the first place.
I believe that if you enjoy writing then you already got the reward just from doing it and quite often the audience will follow in time because the passion and joy will flow effortlessly through your words.
Indeed...
I agree and that's what I already argued with some people about, but said people see the blog as a job and a full-time money maker, so for that reason it's advertising and business as usual.
On the other hand, @teamsteem also made a valid point that if good content producers dont use bots, then bad ones will monopolize the hot and trending pages, giving a bad "window shopping" experience to outside people.
They might be right, but you could also argue that if people didn't use the bots it would be easier for the big-SP curators to bring good posts to the hot page.
And the window shopping experience right now in this bot-controlled environment is all about flag wars and reward pool cheating. So not the best first experience anyway.