As a new Steemit user I have learned many helpful hints that might be of use to other Steemians, and I am sharing these in a series I call "Tiny Tips", and today I want to talk about how to use bots effectively on Steemit.
Today's Tiny Tip of the Day:
Using upvotes from bots can increase your financial returns on Steemit but not always and therefore I recommend using Steembottracker.com to increase your odds of buying a profitable upvote.
Steembottracker.com
- Steembottracker.com was created by a Steemit user named
, and if you do not know him, check him out.
Introduction:
First things first, if you are brand new, an upvote bot is a Steemit account with steem power in it, and the bot uses its SP to upvote content in exchange for payment. These accounts are set up to automatically upvote any post (subject to certain criteria) after you send SBD or Steem to the Steemit upvote with a link to your post URL.
If you use Steembottracker.com, the bidding process and payment delivery is made easier, and looks like this.
Bots vs. Steemians: Bots never lose but you can still win
The most important thing you need to know before using an upvote bot is that you can pay a upvote bot an infinite sum of money but the bot only has limited upvote power to provide in return, therefore buying upvotes will cost more than it returns if done improperly.
No matter how many bids the bot received, they will award 100% of an upvote every time it votes, meaning if you pay $5.00 for a $10.00 vote, you will get a $10 upvote for the low cost of $5.00! The bot gets 25% from the curation rewards plus your $5.00, so they definitely win, but in this example you increased your earnings as well, so this is why I say: "Bots never lose but you can still win".
Steembottracker helps avoid this type of loss when used correctly, and I have listed many basic and advanced pointers below for your review.
Here is what the Steembottracker.com interface looks like:
You can click on any listed upvote bot, and send funds through this link, but before you do that, you should asssess the ROI, and other data outlined clearly so that you can invest wisely.
The Basics of Determining Bot Upvote Profitability:
- Bots only have so much power to award.
- Most bots will accept more bids than they can return in upvotes.
a. Therefore, it is up to you to make sure you only bid on profitable bots. - Bot profitability can be determined using Steembottracker.com, and understanding the following:
a. “Next Vote” tells you when the bot in question will stop accepting new bids and issue its upvote.
b. “Max Suggested Bid” tells you how much you can bid and still receive a profitable upvote.
c. “Includes 25% curation, On/Off”: This should be ON, and if so will give you a more accurate “Max Suggested Bid”
d. “Max Age” tells you how old your post can be and still be eligible for an upvote from the given bot, this is VERY important because some Steemit Whales will downvote you into oblivion if you buy bot votes for posts older than 3.5 days.
Advanced Strategies:
- Buy bot votes right before their bidding window closes. This gives you the most accurate assessment of their profitability, and limits the time in which someone else can follow after you, and ruin the bot’s profitability.
a. Example: If the bot is going to cast its “Next Vote” in 1 minute, and that bot has a “Max Suggested Bid” of $10.00 you can most likely, safely bid, and expect a net positive return on that investment. Because it’s unlikely that within the remaining seconds another bidder will come along, use the same bot, and push the profitability into a negative %. - Buy bot votes in non-peak hours to increase profits. If you log into Steembottracker.com at odd hours you will find that bot’s have greater profitability because fewer users are awake, using Steemit, and buying votes. So, before you go to bed, log into Steembottracker and see if there is a profitable bot vote, you can afford, and if so make a bid.
- Upvotes made on your post after the first 15 minutes will split rewards between you the creator, and all curators of your post, 75% to you, 25% to them. Since some bots will upvote your post immediately, you can use that to your advantage to maximize your return, assuming you have a new post, and an eligble, profitable bot vote available.
- Using bot votes can incentivize your followers to upvote your content because again curators get 25% of the post rewards, and if you are regularly getting big rewards curators are more likely to cast their own upvote to get a slice of that expected return.
Other Options:
If this is all too complicated, but you want to try out using a bot then I recommend you use 
Or another option is 
Final Remarks:
Not everyone likes bots, and truth be told, like any tool they can be used for unsavoury purposes like upvoting spam content, and simplistic, insincere comments, but there are two sides to everything. For instance, there is a lot of great content on Steemit that gets no traction, no views, and no rewards and if in some instances bots can help those content producers, I say that’s a good thing. For this reason I believe bots are generally a good thing for content creators and for Steemit more generally.
For Steemit to grow, we need great content creators, and for great content creators to do their amazing work, we need that work to be rewarded, bots are one way users can help their own growth, audience and rewards and therefore I am pro-bots, within reason.
Like it or lump it, bots are here to stay, so with that in mind, should you ever decide to use a bot, this post, and Steembottracker.com will help you do so effectively.
Comments | Questions:
If you found this content helpful, or not, I'd love to read your comments so I can learn and improve. I love Steemit and I want to see it flourish but for that to happen we all need to actively #grow-steemit, by educating ourselves and the community on its intracacies like maximizing rewards. I believe bots can be a small part of that conversation, let me know if you agree in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this post please consider upvoting, commenting, resteeming and following. I typically post daily content usually about cryptocurrency, technology, my life and faith.
Thanks so much for your time and attention, have an awesome day!