Present state of upvoting bots at steemit that supposedly help minnows to get noticed and thus improve their bogging skill

Hello steemitians, do you need Up Vote from Wall-E?
Source: Pixabay

Since I joined two months (July) back, I quickly noticed without patronage from dolphins let alone whales, getting notice or earn in steemit is really hard and sometimes, de-motivating for new users called minnows.

I tried to write blogs at first, but it resulted time and energy with little notice. I wrote a blog about automation and received not a single comment from readers, 22 visits (I am not sure who they are, could be bots) but I earned 8 SBD using different voting bots. It is not inspirational for new blogger from the writing satisfaction perspective.

Then I got suggestions from one of friends who is in steemit for months to take it slowly, write blogs when I have some reputation, gained some followers and finally understood to use bots to get notice or at least earn something on steemit.

I think these upvote bots are the necessary evils for steemit for time being. Nothing in life and off course, in steemit is fair. People may complain about whales, dolphins circle-jerk voting habits of each other; so does a group of minnows do. However, the problem with minnows is that their vote power do not help each other that much.

As a reputable witnesses Hive account@dragosroua noticed

I think it’s a good thing because it gives people a way of consuming Steem and making Steem travel from one person to another. That’s important because they are creating processes, and the platform needs processes between people to discover and understand the real value of Steem.

If you keep your money, and this other guy keeps his money, and that other guy keeps his money, nothing will happen. The real price will not be discovered. Price is discovered only when there is interaction, and I think these upvote bots, which can be made for better or worse, can help with that.

Reference: https://steemit.com/witness/@badastroza/interesting-people-23-dragos-roua-on-steemit-s-problems-and-what-we-should-do-about-them

There are four types of voting bots according to my usage and observation- PERIODICAL BIDDING, INSTANT VOTING, WHALESHARES, FREE BOTS

Let us discuss first about the PERIODICAL BIDDING bot. The issue with bid type bots is that owners/investors are set to win more if the bot is popular (e.g. Hive account@booster, Hive account@bellyrub, Hive account@nettybot). There are challenges in the user's side. For example one is set to loose 20-40% after curation if total bids are higher (Voting Ppwer is $100, total bids is $120) and therefore, have to time it right.

Figure: Booster

The Hive account@booster bot boasts about Hive account@frontrunner trail (lots of bots that tracks booster), most (some) cases it does not work and at least very much unpredictable to get their votes. The Hive account@booster is getting popular among rich steemitians (dolphins who can afford 10-30 sbd) who can afford to loose since they can earn from other whales, dolphins and minnows vote due to their popularity and better content. But minnow like us have lots of stakes to loose using Hive account@booster, Hive account@bellyrub, Hive account@discordia, Hive account@buildawhale, Hive account@bomerang, if total voting bids are higher than VP and also has to spend time to track the VP and biddings.

Figure: Randowhale

On the other hand, there are POPULAR INSTANT voting bots with higher margin of ROI such as Hive account@minnowbooster, Hive account@randowhale, Hive account@polsza, Hive account@treepalnter. Though they are very popular among minnows, the problem with such bot is that their demand outclasses supply. Since they are certainly have better ROI, the user base is getting larger and their Voting Power (VP) can not keep up. Therefore, for example, Hive account@randowhale will always loose it VP to around 30-40% within days and has to sleep all weekends and night all these days to recover VP. The Hive account@randowhale does not get enough time EVER to recover to 100% VP.

Another example is Hive account@polsza (send fix 0.5 SBD), whose recent voting power is 37.3% ($0.59) even at 100% vote, with curation cost, it may not be profitable.

Figure: Polsza's voting

Form owner/investor's perspective INSTANT voting is less profitable than the PERIODICAL voting bots. Therefore, they are rare, constrained (5 sbd per week for Hive account@minnowbooster), not always available (e.g. Hive account@randowhale is sleeping all weekend).

The third type of bots is WHALESHARES that are based on vote shares of whales such as Hive account@officialfuzzy (e.g. BEYONDBIT, WHALESHARES, TAMIM token). The problem with them, acquiring these tokens is very complex. One has to win competitions which are not guaranteed. Or, one has to buy Bitshares, transfer to Openledger, buy them at appropriate price. The volume is very low and current price of the TOKENS is always overvalued. Therefore, they are not appropriate for average minnows.

Figure: Whaleshares

FREEBOTS such as Hive account@minnowsupport, Hive account@drotto, Hive account@minnowpond are mostly free, but their upvote effect is mostly insignificant. Hive account@minnowsupport has some trailing bots that can upvote a post, therefore is the most popular but can be used once within 12 hours.

It seems there is a huge demand for INSTANT type voting bots. If someone can solve the algorithm to stay LIVE for most of the time, investors are satisfied with moderate profits and show kindness to fellow minnows, there is a chance we may see more Hive account@randowhale's competitors, such as Hive account@polsza.

Note that some bots has bugs that may not work appropriately and slow to react. Look for recent activities of their owner. Or, contact directly with the owner, of you have any question about usage of their bots.

More reading:

1. https://steemit.com/treeplanter/@treeplanter/voting-bots-money-making-machine-interview-with-personz

2. https://steemit.com/booster-knowledge/@booster/how-to-use-booster-upvote-bot-and-explaining-the-primary-and-secondary-systems-the-steem-inflation

3. https://steemit.com/steemit/@randowhale/a-couple-things-about-randowhale

4. https://steemit.com/minnowbooster/@minnowbooster/6rt2mn-introducing-minnowbooster-beta

5. https://steemit.com/discordia/@fortified/discordia-or-the-genesis-of-a-voting-robot-includes-new-animations-from-myself

6. https://steemit.com/bellyrub/@bellyrub/bellyrub-is-awake-send-bids

7. https://steemit.com/steemit/@boomerang/boomerang-a-new-steemit-bid-bot-for-all-steemians-whitepaper

8. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@treeplanter/hello-steemians-i-am-tree-planter-the-voting-bot

9. https://steemit.com/bidbot/@upgoater/upgoater-continues-to-ram-you-with-love

10. https://steemit.com/steemit/@bethalea/building-a-whale

11. http://minnowsupportproject.org/discord/

12. https://steemit.com/whaleshares/@jphenderson/introducing-beyondbits-a-new-whaleshares-token

13. https://steemit.com/hairshares/@eirik/hairshares-another-great-initiative

14. https://steemit.com/steemgig/@dracosalieri/how-to-use-whaleshares-tutorial

15. https://steemit.com/booster/@pawos/the-big-booster-post-who-how-when-randowhale-minnowbooster-booster-and-discordia

16. https://steemit.com/steemit/@alex-icey/steemit-whale-voting-bots-randowhale-booster-and-minnowbooster-which-is-worth-it

17. https://steemit.com/steemit/@flipstar/my-steemit-experiments-with-randowhale-booster-and-minnowbooster

18. https://steemit.com/bot/@polsza/polsza-update-interval-upvotes

19. https://steemit.com/video/@flauwy/minnow-motivation-how-to-survive-your-first-month-on-steemit-without-giving-up

Did I miss to mention any major upvote? What you think of these bot services? Are they good for steemit, in general for minnows?

Thanks for reading and happy steeming!

Hive account@crypto-futurist
Blogs about dataism, transhumanism, technology forecasting, upcoming automation, IoTs & UBI