This experiment #1 was supposed to become my flagship for making a point on steemit. (proof of work that one can earn money - in order to persuade friends and colleagues to join)
The setup was pretty simple.
- Take a photo (preferably done by yourself) and put it on steepshot.
- promote the living shit out of it = get votes / steempower
Trigger Warning:
"descriptions of aberrant violence and torture; blood, puke, sh*t, and other bodily fluids; insects and their consumption; animal costumes and/or furries; pervasive vulgar language; slurs; police brutality; "
Now why did I do such an experiement?
First of all let me asure you I am not a money horny mofo like other people here on steemit that are abusing the system for their own benefit. ( case in point - haejin )
His might be a legit approach to steem because nobody is forcing you to engage with it in a respectful and sustainable manner in the first place. But if you do the math you will soon realize that he earns like an oligarch in the midst of dirty starving baby-goats
His doing and the shark behavior of many others is bleeding the system dry and has established a very unhealthy eco-system where a small number of people jerk each other off systematically and the majority is left with very little.
with that rantcrap out of the way let me get to the actual topic. (do not worry RayDay rants will be back)
step1 - setup
straight forward approach to leveraging the infrastructure set in place by many lovely devs in order to make some money. Yes, simple money. I wanted to demonstrate that with an investment of 0.5 SBD you can actually get a simple picture that has not much worth to be worth something.
first let's have a look at the picture
nothing special. just an old cabbin in the swiss mounains.
step2 - promotion
let's get some votes.
There are 2 ways to get some votes. by force or by chance.
As you might have guessed by chance is not really up to you. you can't really influence it.
By force on the other hand is the fun part. you can engage with actual human beings and promote your post or you can make use of vote-bots which vote for you.
you might ask, is this going to be interesting at some point?
so what happend
well, long story short I tried and failed.
But not because I was incapable of getting votes, I did have 6$ worth a picture at one time and I didn't spend 0.5 SBD so far and no other currency was paid to promote that photo.
It started out like a normal "stupid" project: I posted it on some channels in discord and telegram https://t.me/SteepShotFreeUpvotes which is pretty much made exactly for such a thing. And of course I had some bots from https://steembottracker.com/ which has a very pleasent UI/UX website for steemvote-bot bidding. great work
If you can ignore the fact that these vote-whores (literally?) are part of the ERROR that has spread his roots in the steemsystem.
Until then everything was a smooth ride. I must admit i didn't really do the exact math behind the votes I generated from the bots and the amount I paid for in SBD but let me make one thing clear: most bots, most times are not worth it.
This means that most bots are not made to make you a large profit but to keep you investing in them. time after time. In other words you get a little bit of profit but it is nothing compared to what they are generating with the bot-service.
What actually got me to 6$ was a chance upvote by steepshot itself which is probably a bot itself and acts when a picture is liked x times in y time - don't know - and definitely no intention of doing my own research how steepshot operates ;)
Even though bots are evil bullshit incarnated and will sooner or later destroy this steem-economy, they are a necessary evil atm to handle the flaws in the system that don't seem to be tackled at all. Ain't nobody got time for that now--
I will continue --
my lame story and tell you how #1 failed.
step3
It failed because I underestimated the power of stupid =)
Nah, not really. I got 2 flags because... I don't know yet but I will find it out eventually. I guess bots that gave me a flag and took all the money from the cabin photo and (I think at least) some of my reputation, did this because I used too many bots.
I assume they want to correct the prize of trash.
(even though https://steemit.com/trending/@themarkymark/trending-153) - read the comment section from trending-trash! - that's the content in theory that should get the flags
Thank you very much
and 
your intentions might be good but please leave us minnows alone. Don't we have it tough enough already? + btu u dirty cavedweller upvoting haejin posts - bullocks TA donkeylover
BUT ähm
This is one fucked up thing about steemit. If you have money = influence = power you can always be gaining steempower, every post gets you multiple 100$ not because your content is that good but because people follow your person and want to cash in on curation rewards. + you can jerk yourself off which makes it very very easy to fuck yourself
probably just a reflection of how the real world works with the 1% rich, the steemit community faces a similar crisis and not enough social warriors like 
wans't it supermans grand daddy that once told him:
"With great power comes great responsibility. Now go wash you hands, dinner is ready"
step0
What? this post is still going?
starting from scratch - fail is just a name we give our experiences
don't use all the bots available. 
I haven't had the time to get to know every vote-whore out there (yes I mean your bots) but I am pretty sure there are many more whales and dolphins and damn sharks that use the money they earn on good stuff like 
the world runs on trust and I just lost a little bit thanks to an algorithm that I hope wasn't designed to do what It did to my lovely cabbin with only half a roof of snow...
rayday over