So on my second last post which was about steembottracker(a useful website related to upvote biding bots, created by Yabapmatt and co-owner Aggroed), I discussed and explained the different elements related to biding bots. I gave few examples how this thing really works but very basic info was explained by me. That post was already too much lengthy so I could not explain the algorithm or formula there. So I had to leave that for my next post. If you want to check that post, click here.
Today, I will be explaining the formula on the basis of which biding bots work or upvote posts. I often use steembottracker to see how people are biding on different bots. When I open steembottracker, I go to the details tab of different bots and I notice that so many people use biding bots but they don't know how that really works. And instead of having profit, they lose a portion of their invested SBD's and Steem while biding. I am making this post to help those people to understand, when to bid and how much to bid to not lose a portion of their invested SBD's and Steems on the payout day of their posts.
I am not here to encourage people to use biding bots for their profit but I really want to help those who are losing a portion of their SBD's and Steems while using biding bots. Its a helping guide for those who post quality content and have not been noticed yet but for the cause of attention they use biding bots to get people's attention. The use of biding bots is acceptable or not in the steemit community, its a big debate. I am not gonna jump into that. The purpose of this post is to help quality content users to at least get the SBD and Steem back what they have spent on biding bots or to minimize their loss.
People who must give attention to this method :
Now lets talk about the users who should care about this formula. Those users who post quality content and use biding bots to promote their posts but still did not get the attention of a whale, an orca or a dolphin or don't have a decent amount of followers. These are the people who should pay attention to this method. Lets take an example,
Suppose 'ABC' makes a post and placed a 3 SBD bid on an upvote biding bot to promote his post and gets a return upvote of 7$(not US-$ but the one shown on steemit.com). So in this case, if ABC gets the upvote on his post after 30 minutes then 25% of the payout goes to the curator's share. Lets do a little math.(from now on the $ sign used represents the one shown on steemit.com).
ABC's post payout = 7$
Curator's share will be 25% if upvote is received after 30 minutes.
25% of 7$ = 7 x 0.25 = 1.75$ (this is the curator's share that will be deducted from payout).
7 – 1.75 = 5.25$ left for author ( half of it will be paid in SBD and half in steem power)
So divide 5.25 by 2 = 2.625 is the amount of SBD, ABC will get on payout day.
Lets calculate ABC's loss or profit of SBD. The formula is,
SBD received on payout – SBD invested for promotion
2.625 – 3 = -0.375 (negative sign indicates loss).
So this means, ABC lost 0.375 SBD on his bid.
Many will say,
"But he gained Steempower as well”.
Yea I agree on that point but if he keeps biding this way,
at the end he will be left with 0 SBD's in his account wallet.
Now if ABC's post gets an upvote of 7$ on a bid of 3 SBD's in under 15 minutes mark then he may get profit from this bid or the damage could be a little less. Because the curator's share will be 15% in this case.
People who are not affected much, to whether pay attention to this method or not :
The people who post quality content as well as use biding bots and have some whale or dolphin following then I think if they still pay attention to this method, it will benefit them too but if they don't, it will not matter much to them.
WHY ???
Reason with an example :
Lets suppose XYZ is a user who have earned some dolphin and whale following or a huge number of followers. He made a post, he placed a bid of 3 SBD and in return he get a 7$ upvote from the bot. He have dolphin and whale following. So lets suppose he gets a 3$ upvote from them as well. And it raised his post payout to 10$.
Now lets calculate XYZ's profit and loss.
Suppose all the votes casted are after 30 minutes.
Curator's share = 25% of 10 = 2.5$
10$ - 2.5$ = 7.5$
Half paid in SBD's and half in Steempower.
7.5 divided by 2 = 3.75 SBD on payout day.
Calculating XYZ's SBD profit or loss.
SBD received on payout – SBD invested for promotion
3.75 – 3 = +0.75 SBD (positve sign indicates profit).
This means XYZ made a profit of 0.75 SBD on his bid.
Plus the steempower he gets. Overall, his bid was a profitable bid.
Formula on the basis of which biding bots distribute their votes or make the upvotes :
I have researched about the biding bots a lot and this is what I came up with. As we all know biding bots are programmed through computer programming, so it is possible to find the algorithm they use for upvoting. It took me almost 4 hours and a number of fail bidings (loss in SBD) to figure it out. Now I am gonna share this information with you guys with few examples.
When you open steembottracker, make sure to select the Post rewards(what is shown on steemit.com) option from the display currency tab. I have explained about it in detail in my second last post.
I am using 
Now in the above picture as you can see, I am using the data of last round because the votes are confirmed. You can see total vote value of postpromoter which is 689.40$(not US-$ but the one shown on steemit.com). This is the vote value of postpromoter bot at 100%. Below that is the amount of total bids in SBD and Steem. And we have the ROI value. The ROI value have big impact on larger bids but not so much on bids that are close to minimum value of the respected bot.
The $ sign that will be used in calculations will be the one shown on Steemit.com not the US-$.
As you can see in the picture above, the user Rijalaronaceh have placed a bid of 3 Steem and another user by the name of Nazmul8877 have placed a bid of 3 SBD. Rijalaronaceh will get a vote % of 0.65% and Nazmul8877 will get a vote % of 0.81%. The vote value as shown for Rijalaronaceh is 4.50$ and vote value for Nazmul8877 is shown to be 5.56$.
But they will get more than that. Rijalaronaceh will get a 1% vote value instead of 0.65% and it will be approx. 6.89$. Nazmul8877 will also get 1% vote value instead of 0.81% and it will be approx. 6.89$ as well.
The reason for it is, if the bidder is getting a vote% equal to or greater than 0.55% then he will get a 1% vote value instead. If its less than 0.55% then he will get 0.5% vote value.
100% vote value of postpromoter bot is 689.40$ as shown in above picture and its 1% will be 689.40 divided by 100 = 6.89$.
(Calculations are done on behalf of the data shown in the picture. Data in the above picture is collected at the time when the screenshot was taken).
Here are few screenshots taken from another useful website called steemworld.org built by 
Screenshot of Rijalaronaceh's account.(From steemworld.org)
Values infront of weight shows the vote value i.e, 7$ (only vote value of postpromoter bot). 9.50$ is the overall value of post, combining all the votes. Don't get confused by it. The little difference between the values(I said 6.89$ and 7$ shown in the picture) is due to fluctuating values of Steem at the moment.
Screenshot of Nazmul8877's account.(From steemworld.org)
Values infront of weight shows the vote value i.e, 6.98$ (only vote value of postpromoter bot). 7.55$ is the overall value of post, combining all the votes. The little difference between the values(I said 6.89$ and 6.98$ shown in the picture) is due to fluctuating values of Steem at the moment.
Another screenshot of the same biding round on postpromoter bot. To clear the other half of the formula.
In the above picture, the user Wolfje have placed a bid of 4.96 SBD and is getting a 1.32% vote and its value is shown 9.10$. But he will get approx. 10.33$ which is 1.5% vote value of postpromoter bot. The other user by the name of Steem.power have placed a 4 SBD bid and is getting a 1.07% vote and its value is shown 7.34$. But he will also get the same as Wolfje i.e, 10.33$ vote value.
The reason for this is that if the vote % is equal to or greater than 1.05% then the vote will be cast at 1.5% vote value. If the vote% is less than 1.05% then the vote will be cast at 1%.
Screenshot of Wolfje's account.(From steemworld.org)
Screenshot of Steem.power's account.(From steemworld.org)
The same formula applies for the rest of the percentage values as well. Some general and random examples, 2.20% and 2.45% will be upvoted as 2.5%, 3.02% and 2.80% will be upvoted as 3%, 4.65% and 4.95% as 5%, 10.40% and 10.05% as 10.5% etc.