Regardless of whether we like it or not, bid-bots appear to be here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. This is the natural and logical result of refusing to fix the enormous gap between self-interest and the game-theory of Steemit, where maximizing selfishness will lead to compounding benefits. It was either going to be this or 99% of network activity was going to be self-voted. I'm not sure which is better.
So, with the begrudging acceptance of one who has campaigned against bid bots, then reluctantly embraced them, let's look at a few things that I can tell from the bidding logs a great deal of you are doing wrong.
This would be the cardinal sin under the current delegation regime. Don't do it. Skipping it will cost you and your fellow bidders money.
This is probably the biggest one causing problems for users, and it's where most of your (and my) losses come from.
Avoid bidding near the end of a round. It's safer to have your bids in with 3 minutes left on the timer, and even that is pushing it – 4+ is better. This prevents you overbidding a round, or inducing others who are less careful to overbid the round, resulting in losses for everyone. The timer on the bot tracker regularly desyncs and can be off by as much as 90 seconds, plus you need to account for transactions time and the bot software to recognize your bid.
This isn't Ebay. Sniping doesn't really work so well when you need to sign your transaction to a blockchain.
You may be able to get post in without curation, and therefore bid up a bot over a "loss" after the -25% cut, but most other users either can't or won't. Doing this will come directly at their cost and, to me, qualifies as "rude but technically possible.
I see people purchasing bids for dead posts that are already over 30 minutes old at a loss, with no hope of receiving any views or attention based no how much they bid. You may as well give up on this, bots are not money printing machines anymore (unless you own one.)
If you can, try to get whitelisted at a selective bot like SmartSteem to reduce the pool of other customers you must compete with. Use the few bots with an active blacklist and anti-abuse measures, such as BuildAWhale and Smart Steem, both of which are often profitable. If you need to bid early, use a bot with an ROI limit, as shown above, to minimize potential losses.
Things go wrong. Not every bid you submit will receive the appropriate vote. You will need to audit, like reconciling a checkbook.
I try to use a maximum formula dependent on each bots minimum bid value (Say, 2x min bid +1, or 3x -1, etc,) but one thing I do no matter what - add a -1 SBD to my bid formula. It's a lot harder to go wrong under-bidding than over bidding, not only do you create less losing rounds for others, but your individual RoI per SBD spent will be higher.
Kind of a no brainer, but it's hard to hit the exchange at the last second.
Don't be the catalyst for the next reward pool war.
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Sources: Google, SteemBotTracker
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