Bid-based voting bots has become the new norm. No matter how one feel about them, I'm pretty sure they are here to stay. So, I decided to blow a few SBD on them, to see if there is any profit in it for the bidders.
Disclaimer: I've been dipping my toes in the shallow-end of the pool, only bidding the minimum or just above minimum bid. My lowest bid was 0.485 SBD and my highest was 4.059 SBD.
I'll keep it fairly broad, not going into each and every post I used a bot for, but rather looking at the totals. I'm sure this is not the best or correct way to go about it, but for me the total spent and total gained is what matters the most.
I bid 18 times on 13 different posts that I posted in the period from February 13 to February 22. I used 10 different bid-based voting bots. In total I spent 44.270 SBD with an average bid of 2.459 SBD.
Total vote value I received from the bots, before curation, was $88.77. After 25% curation we're looking at $66.58 in total vote value received. Average vote value was $3.70 after curation. All of my posts had 50/50 payouts, so I got back 33.29 in SBD and an equal $ amount in SP. That's from the bots alone.
If we look at total author payouts for the 13 posts it was $96.20, with 48.10 in SBD and rest in SP. That is with all upvotes received. I've also gained 100 new followers since February 13 (to date).
I'm not sure how to go about evaluating this. If you look isolated at the bots, the SBD return vs SBD spent is a loss. If you include SP value, it's a 50% profit. The latter is how I've been looking at it. Yes, the SP is subject to 13 weeks of power down and the value can change in that period of time, that's why I'm not sure if that is the correct way to look at it.
If you look at total payouts, it's a profit even when only looking at SBD. My reasoning for wanting to include the total author payout, is that I suspect my posts came higher on the hot page for the tags used because of the bot votes. And therefore more people see it, giving me a higher engagement on my posts than usual. Same goes for followers, I may have gained a few extra followers that I wouldn't have gained if I did not use the bots. And the way I look at it, that could in return give me higher engagement on future posts.
Bottom line, I'm not sure about anything. I like to believe it was worth it, even if I only spent a couple of SBD pr post. If you spend 100+ SBD on one post, and hit the main trending page and stuff like that, I'm sure it can be highly lucrative and well worth it every time. At least if your content is top notch.
Will I use them in the future? I'm not sure. Probably. It seems that you have to if you want to come above the noise threshold and continue your growth on the platform.
If you're gonna use the bid bots, check out https://steembottracker.com/ and keep an eye on total bids and max suggested bid. It's not a guarantee that you'll make a profit, but it will give you some indication at least. The vote values I've used in this post I got from looking at https://steemworld.org/ - I really like this site. The interface is great, gives you all kinds of useful information.
If my method of evaluating this is flawed, please let me know. I'm happy for any feedback that will help me get a better understanding of everything :)
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