Grow on Steemit! Using Bots and apps to your benefit!

Hi Steemians! Growth is what we look up for in whatever we do, don't we? Using Steemit platform for about 2 months now, I have grown my account from RP 25 to RP 50, and I will tell you guys how I achieved it. RP stands for reputation and is shown in brackets after your username, in case you have not been aware of it, but I guess most of the users know about it. I have outlined the growth in terms of RP because I believe monetary rewards comes after we develop our skills and when presented in proper way, incentives follow. In my case, that might not be fully true because there are some ways where we can increase our RP without much effort, which I've practiced but now as my RP is above 50, I am thinking of discontinuing much of those from now on. I would say that I have yet to taste success in steemit but I got to celebrate the doubling of my RP through this post. From now on, I intend to gain proper followers and receive proper upvotes which are not paid for and which I think is much more satisfying. But for one last time, I will use paid voting for the visibility sake of this post.

Basically, I will be talking about apps and bots I've been using and tell you guys, how to use them to your benefit. In general, I will list them in two categories, bots and apps so, here we go!

Upvote Bots

I will start with bots as I have been using them to increase my RP on regular basis. Basically, there are three types of upvote bots on steemit, fixed rate bots and bid based bot and a resteem service bots. They are paid bots therefore you should have Steem Dollars in your wallet in order to use them. Using them is quite easy as you just have to send certain amount to their wallet with the link of your post to get upvoted. Most of the bots stats can be accessed through the app that I will describe in app section.

• Fixed Rate Bots: These bots are quite easy to use and since I've already told how to use them I won't repeat again. After sending their minimum fee, you almost receive upvotes from them almost instantaneously. With higher amount you send to them, they can help your post get listed on hot page where they will remain visible for few hours and if your contest is great and others like it, it will move to trending page where it will stay visible for few days. These kinds of bots are usually profitable to use and the best part is receiving quick upvotes from them. The most popular fixed rates bots are @randowhale and @minnowbooster. @randowhale is not available all the time because it doesn't let its voting power go down below 90%, so I guess it sleeps for about 12 hours to recharge until next voting session and usually has min-max fee of 0.5-1 SBD for upvotes. @minnowbooster however is available most of the time and has greater range of min-max fee for upvotes. These bots also have curation trail so you get lots of votes after the main bot has voted.

• Bid based Bots: Using these kinds of bots is quite the same however be careful while using them as they can result in loss of your investment in paid upvotes. The users of these types of bots send their bids to the bots wallet and receive upvotes when the bots voting power reaches 100% and the usual time taken is about 2.4 hours. Alternatively, there are some bots who use half the amount of time i.e. 1.2 hours. I have used these type of bots but regarding the risk of being in loss, I do not use them quite often. If the bids exceed the vote value of the bots at 100%, you will be incurring loss on your investment, so a look at the wallet of the bots might help before deciding to bid for upvote. Also, calculate the 25% curation rewards in regards to the vote value you will be receiving. However there is a easy way to make profit on your bids by using the Bot Tracker app which I shall discuss in the app section. There are lots of bid based bots and I have listed them as per their vote worth in descending order.

• Resteem Service Bots : There are few bots that resteems your post for a fee which might give you additional exposure. I rarely use them because I myself do not upvote that kind of posts as I think curation rewards are rare from that kind of posts. However, if it is a nice post then I don't really mind upvoting them. Usually these kinds of bots have a large follower base and can re-circulate your post to quite a lot but I am not really fond of them.

So, I have used these bots basically to increase my RP as it is a known fact that with upvotes, RP increases as well. Some of these bots have lots of Steem Power aka SP and with quite a good amount of fee you send them, your RP will increase dramatically. But the catch is, you need to buy some Steem Dollars from the exchanges which is quicker way otherwise wait until you receive enough from your posts. Alternatively, there are lots of contest going on where you might receive SBD if you win the contest or challenge, simply head to page with contest tag to see which contest is going on.

Steemit apps

The apps are very helpful to check the data of your account and others as well. The apps usually consolidate the useful data and present in easy-to-use interface. Most of these apps have been developed by the witnesses of Steemit, so be sure to cast your Witness votes to the Witnesses you like who have made your Steemit experience easier. As the apps are of different kinds, categorizing them is not convenient, so I will cover them individually with link to their link in the heading.

• eSteem app: This app is mobile version of the steemit platform developed by @goodkarma who is one of the top witnesses. You can basically do everything one can do in steemit platform from commenting to posting, reading and curating, checking your profile and wallet. The wallet is much more descriptive than that of steemit and the rewards are shown in vests as well. The best thing that I like about this app is you can receive about $ 0.30 worth of upvotes from @goodkarma and its curation trail in all your posts and comments. However, there is a catch to receive the upvotes, you have to make sure @goodkarma is active which you can make sure by using another app which I shall describe later.

• SteemNow : This app is a web version and is developed by @penguinpablo. I mostly use this app to check my stats and steem price. This app has a upvote calculator as well and shows how much is your upvote worth at different voting weights. I mostly use this app to check my voting power and generally start upvoting when it is near 100%. Further, you can see upvotes received with vote weights and also the list of your posts with pending rewards.

• Steem.Supply: This app is also quite useful which has been developed by @dragousroua. This app lets you see pending payouts after deduction of the curation rewards for your posts. Comments payouts are also shown in a separate tab. You can also check out the social insight of your blog and see who upvotes you regularly and weights of those who have upvoted. This app is quite a useful stats tool.

• Whalesonar: This app has become quite useful for me as it lets us check which whales are currently active. This app is especially useful for me to check whether @goodkarma is active or not. If it is active then I post my content otherwise I save it which can be accessed through drafts tab later for posting through the esteem app. You can choose minimum Steempower of whales to filter the smaller ones and the default filter is at 10K SP. If a whale upvotes someone then the sonar displays them according to their category with their username and whom they upvoted with certain voting weights.

• Steemit Bot Tracker : This is a very useful app if you are an user of the bots which has been developed by @yabapmatt. In the bots section, I have already outlined about the bots, their types and how to use them. This app comes in handy when you are using bid based bots as it shows the total vote worth of the bot, bids received for next vote session, profitable bid amount and time till next vote session. With this much info, you can be a profitable bidder and never lose on your bids again.

• Steemfollower: This app is the one I use almost everyday which has been developed by @mahdiyari. This app basically helps you to increase followers and if you see my profile and see about 600 followers now, most of them are from this app. But there is a better function in this app, which is rather called exchange, an upvote exchange, yes you can swap upvotes. If you upvote posts through this app, you will receive points for the upvotes you cast and the points which are called author points which are accumulated to receive votes from others. If you have a bigger SP then you will receive more author points which is tied to SBD value. The author points can be exchanged for upvotes or an internal market where it can be sold for SBD directly. I have yet to see user of 70+ RP but there are lot of users with RP of 50’s and 60’s as well and a large chunk of the users are below 50 RP.

• Discord app: Although this app is not specially made for steemit, there are channels that you can join that are special to steemit. Do consider joining PAL channel and Steemfollower channel as you can receive upvotes from their bots. PAL channel has a minimum joining fee of SBD 0.002 and it does payoff to spend that amount. You can receive about $0.07+ worth of upvotes from minnowsupport, banjo, drotto and their curation trail after sending them your link of the post and it is free support for minnows.

• Busy.org : I recently used this app to post although I had been checking it out for a while now. This app lets you do everything that you can do on steemit and has a quite good looking interface. I found out that there is a trouble while typing in the editor busy.org provides but since they have a good development team, they should fix it soon. The best part about this app is the bot voting you after you post through this app and give a tag busy for your post. The bot is quite different in this one as it calculates you follower SP weight and votes you accordingly, so if you have whales in your follower list, you will receive a good reward for using the app. I received $0.09 worth of upvote from busy.org for posting, give it a try and see what you get. There is also chat feature in this app, if you would like to go on a chatting spree.

• WhaleShares : I haven't used this one yet as we need whaleshares or beyondbit tokens for using the upvote function. I have heard it is good to use it and the tokens can be obtained either by participating and winning contests or buying them in bitshares DEX. I am keeping it in my to-do list to check out the service they are providing.

Well, that is all the apps that I've been using regularly to grow on steemit but there are lot of other apps in steemit which makes our life a lot easier blogging on steemit. do check these other apps as well as they let you have better insight of steemit.
• Mangosteem : For chatting
• Steemstats : For detailed user stats
• Steem.cool: To check your RP stats
• Steemdb : User Stats
• Steemd : Steem blockchain explorer
• Steem Voter : Automatic voter, upto 3 rules are free
• Steemviz.com : To check potential payouts
• SteemWhales : To check whale rankings and user stats
• Minnowbooster : To lease and delegate SP
• SteeM.V.P. : To check your most voter list
• SteemData : Overall data of Steem in Charts
• Spectacles for Steemit : Your data on Steemit
• SteemWorld : Your personalized data on Steemit
• AutoSteem : Automating your Votes

I might have missed a lot of awesome apps so do comment your favourite one and the one who has helped you to grow here on steem. Thanks and Cheers!

The photos are from pixabay and profile of the mentioned bots or apps