So, Bid Bots are a hot topic. Just about everyone is talking about them. While the Zeitgeist is in full effect I wanted to take some time during my semi-weekly Steem orientation to explain how they work, show an example, and visit a website designed to show you how to achieve maximum earnings from your bid bot investing. This is the Bid Bot 101 portion. I then present some basic level steem information to help look under the hood and explain how the platform works.
On a side note, my argument is that a bidbot is just a tool. The tool is neither good or bad, but it's a tool that can be used. If it's used to solely upvote shitpots then it's a bad tool. If it's used unethically that's also a bad tool. If we as a community use them to upvote high quality content and support authors on the platform then it can be a tool for good.
Also, bid bot owners and people that delegate to them are investors. Rather than shutting down an avenue for their investment entirely, which would hurt the price of steem I think we should figure out as a community how do we run them well. I'm going to attempt to put together something along the lines of a Steem Chamber of Commerce or a more narrowly focused a League of Extraordinary Bid Bot Owners to help set some standards of ethical practice for owners and advice for buyers.
If you end up wanting to invest in Steem and earn a return through an ethical bid bot I'd encourage you to check out this post and consider delegating steem power to it: https://mspsteem.com/bidbot/@minnowsupport/a-bidbot-for-the-people-introducing-msp-bidbot
Since it's been active yesterday it's almost doubled the steem power that I initially placed on it.