This might be a personal question for everyone and for this reason the answers might differ alot, but let me explain what i mean.
First of all, note down that i approve voting bots and that i think they are important for the platform as long as they don't get abused too much.
My own experience
I have been on the platform for almost 5 months now and i have written/shared different kinds of content before and after discovering upvote/bid bots. My view on steemit completely changed after i figured out how to use bid bots correctly which resulted in me getting more out of my SBD's than just simply powering up.
I noticed that writing posts without having the funds to promote it by using bid bots on it were harder to write and less fun to write. In the end, i knew it wouldn't reach alot of people and i would not accomplish anything with it apart from maybe entertaining or helping/informing 10% of my followers. This makes me think putting alot of time in a post (a couple hours for example) is not worth it for those maximum number of 20-25 people who will see it or take the time to read/watch it.
On the other hand, publishing posts while knowing i can boost it to over 100$ in rewards is alot easier. I am alot more motivated because i know more people will actually see or read it. On top of that all, i will gain more SP, get a part of my investment back(or more) and i have a big chance of gaining more followers which we all would love to have.
It's so expensive
After realizing all the above, and i am sure i am not the only one realizing all this, we all start calculating. If we want a post to reach above 100$ which results in a post getting in the HOT section (which doesn't really change alot), we need to invest around 50 SBD for every post. In an ideal situation, we would want to post daily which would cost us 7x50= 350 SBD a week.
Right now (30-4-2018) 1 SBD = $3,40, if we do that x 50 it's: 170$. That means it would cost us 170$ a day to post and $1190 a week to keep posting daily.
The above numbers are to reach "just" around/above 100$ on your post, which actually is not enough at all to get the most out of it. If we take a look at the trending page the numbers are way above that number. I am not even going to bother to calculate that since it is undo-able for me and many others who don't have the financial status to upvote their posts to the trending page.
What can we do?
Right now, i don't have near $1170 to invest in my profile here. We all know that we need to have priorities on what we spend our time and money on. In my case, my family needs to be able to eat and live healthy before i can invest any $ in anything else. During the current stage of my life, i don't have anything to invest here.
Which leaves me with all the $ i made from writing posts in the last 5 months, which is around 50 SBD. This lets me use bid bots 1 x a week and demotivates me from posting daily. Don't get me wrong, i don't think steemit is a platform where a person has to post daily. I think a person has to post quality consistently instead of posting bull-shit now and then just to be able to post daily. Take that as an explanation why i don't post that much.
Thank you for reading
These are my thoughts and opinions. I am wondering about other people's thoughts about this too, if you care enough to leave a comment you can be asured that i will read it and reply on it.