Its a bit of a double edged sword for me. I find that i spend more time and effort with the bots as i feel my content needs to be extra good to get noticed. With bots i find im a bit more lazy cos i can just buy votes.

I cant afford big votes either.

Im doing an experiment with bots at the moment to try find out how profitable they are if your interested -

https://steemit.com/steemit/@conradt/the-great-bid-bot-experiment