About 
A blog is a business and, just like any other business, it will typically need to advertise in order to get customers - or in the case of a blog - readers.
There are many ways to advertise on the Steem platform including, but not limited to, joining various support communities, word-of-mouth marketing, publishing on social media sites, and paid advertisements.
I started
In addition to providing a valuable service to content publishers,
Intended Usage
The intended usage of the
Some examples of situations in which the
- To promote a product or service
- To spread a message
- To grow a brand or a following
- To gain support for a cause
Some examples of unintended usage of the service are:
- To make a direct profit off of the service’s upvote
- To profit off of other’s work passed off as one’s own
- To promote any type of scam, fraudulent, or deceptive service or scheme
Spam, Fraud, and Plagiarism Prevention
Unfortunately, there is a significant amount of spam and plagiarism that occurs on the Steem platform as people try to take advantage of the rewards-based nature of the system.
Plagiarism (the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own) and fraud (deception intended to result in financial or personal gain) are both very clearly wrong and in many cases even illegal.
Any confirmed cases of plagiarism or fraud which have been promoted by the
Spam, unlike plagiarism and fraud, is more of a gray area, and comes down to a subjective determination of what constitutes “valuable content”. Spammers, for the most part, exploit inefficiencies in the paid advertising market on the Steem platform in order to directly profit from the advertising they purchase.
While there is nothing technically wrong or illegal about this activity, it is clearly detrimental to the image and value of the Steem platform and the STEEM token, and furthermore it goes against the intended usage of the
I believe that the best way to ultimately combat this type of spam is to create a more transparent and efficient market for paid advertising so that there are no longer any inefficiencies to exploit. While I have been and will continue to work towards that goal, I realize that it may take quite some time to get there and, in the meantime, a more proactive stance against spam should be taken as discussed below.
Blacklist
In the past the
To that end, in the very near future 
Going forward, any Steem accounts on that list will no longer be able to use the
In many cases inclusion on this list is a subjective measure, so if you feel that there has been a mistake please contact me and I will review on a case-by-case basis as time permits.
Notification of Paid Promotion
On most traditional websites promoted or sponsored content is clearly labelled as such; however, on most Steem-based websites, no such labelling exists. I believe it’s important to be fully transparent and for consumers to be able to tell what content has received paid promotion and what has not.
There are many issues with effectively implementing such labelling on Steem platform-based websites which are out of the scope of this post, but customers should note that the
Service Guarantee
Current settings and status of the service are available at all times on the Steem Bot Tracker website.
Despite aspiring to provide the highest possible level of service, issues can and do arise from time to time which can cause a vote or refund to be missed. When such issues occur, please be patient and wait 24 hours to receive a refund for a missed vote. If, after 24 hours, you have neither received a vote or a refund please contact me,