This post interests me, because I am trying to decided if a bot can really help profits more than I can do myself through curation. In cases where I have more SP than the bot, I think keeping the SP is probably better for improving vote rewards and curation rewards, which all recircle back actively to help SP continue to grow and put it use much quicker to continue to increase the rate of return.

50 SP sometimes takes a loooong time to earn manually, unless you get lucky whale votes, or paid using bots (which is really just converting your SBD into rewards you have to wait another 7 days for). I calculated that delegating that much to a small bot was going to take an even longer time waiting for them to pay back the $50 in rewards than if I kept it to help increase my own rewards.

My opinion is delegating is probably best for supporting a cause being performed by a group or service that you have no time or interest in managing.

These things are hard to measure and compare definitively, but I like the clear way you outlined it. Thanks.