WHAT'S YOUR VIEW ON BOTS? Promotion tool or necessary evil? Let me share my personal view.
 | Lately I've spent number of hours trying to learn as much as possible about this very sensitive topic: STEEMIT BOTS. |
|---|
INTRODUCTION
My goal was to find out if bots are indeed:
Profitable
How can we use them to maximize our benefits
Mostly I wanted to know what is the steemit's community approach towards bots in general
Some of you may already know @yabapmatt as he is behind very well know site (steembottracker.com). He clearly is very positive and encouraging towards using bots as one of very few ways for beginners (so called minnows) to get some traffic into their blog.
"I am a big proponent and user of the various paid voting bots and services on the Steem platform. I think they provide a great service to minnows and new users by allowing us to get our posts out there and seen by more people and build our following."
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@yabapmatt/introducing-the-steem-upvote-bot-tracker
From my personal experience it's pretty much not possible ever to hit a trending page without using bots. Most population of steemit users seem to be accepting the fact that bot's are a part of this platform and they are here to stay. But there are also many of those who are highly against bots usage and it's best to stay out of their radar.
@bloodviolet created a very informative post trying to answer one very simple question: "Voting bots - Good or Bad?"
https://steemit.com/steemit/@bloodviolet/voting-bots-good-or-bad
Conclusion is very strong:
"every big account used a bot at one point in time, especially in the beginning, and a decent percentage of accounts, even those with more then 100,000 followers, still use bots to increase their likes and comments. "
The truth is that amount of users using bots are only increasing. Which brings me to another big question:
ARE USING BOTS EVEN PROFITABLE?
Currently with very low price of SBD and STEEM using bots seem to be very unprofitable. At least that's my experience.
And what is the value of SBD? Will it increase? Let's say that SBD will be worth 10usd? @gmichelbkk has been trying to answer similar question some time ago.
He wrote once:
"Now that 1 SBD is valued at $10.82, would you like to know if using Steem upvote bots is still profitable? "
It may be worth checking out:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@gmichelbkk/is-it-still-profitable-to-bid-for-steem-upvote-bots
I would also like you to check out @earthnation, who created lately very valuable post: "The Best and Most Profitable Bots on Steemit. 1/18/2018":
https://steemit.com/steem/@earthnation/the-best-and-most-profitable-bots-on-steemit-1-18-2018
In my honest opinion, it's already very hard to make any profit on using bots. The demand is quite high and supply isn't that huge. We all need to learn to post during peak hours but to use bots outside those peak hours? Sunday from my experience is always the best as amount of other bidders isn't as high as any other day.
I can hardly imagine how much harder things might get for bot users once the price of Bitcoin will increase and the value of SBD will also be much higher.
WHAT'S MY PERSONAL VIEW ON BOTS?
I found it really hard to profit alone on the usage of bots. With the current low value of STEEM and SBD it's hard to break even. It's hardly worth the time that will be wasted. But we should not focus on earning rewards for ourselfs!
Today i would like everyone to change their point of view for a moment. Stop and look around. You will realize quickly that it is important to help your curators grow. There are many people out there who spent hours building engagement with others and receiving curation rewards. And they will very often be focusing on upvoting accounts with solid reward pool.
To put it simple: If you want people to auto-vote you, then you need to make sure that your rewards will be worth it. Use bots mostly to support your followers. And they will become very "loyal".
 | How to do that? It's pretty simple:  Self-vote and use bots only 1 day after you publish your post. Give curators chance to upvote your post and just then use all possible resources to pump your paycheck. This way you will benefit your curators the most. |
|---|
After all we're all "in it together". It's hard to become succesful on steemit as an individual. We all need to build and support community around us if we want to achieve any goals at all.
CONCLUSIONS
I quickly realized that Steemit is allowing me to target my audience very efficiently which allows me to get to know right people. But at the same time, the rewards system for being a curator is a joke. We end up looking for accounts like "haejin" to auto-vote them.
It's very tempting to spend enough money on bots to boost your post until it will reach the trending page. I did it once and I got maybe 30-50 new followers, but almost no one new commented my post. So was it worth it?
The answer is: not really. Mostly because I attracted the attention of some whale who downvoted me right away. I spoke to him later on and it turned out that there is strong community of whales playing a "steemit police" who tend to downvote trening posts if they noticed that bots were used to boost an article. Hell, I will stay away from trending page for as long as possible. Now I know it's not worth to get their attention.
It is very important for you guys to remember that lesson. Avoid trending page if you want to stay out of "steem-whales-police" radar.
Why I care about your opinion?
To tell you the truth, I dont care much about what other "whales" think. I know that I will never be able to please everyone. There will be always be someone out there who disagrees with me.
But at the same time I care about those who engage with my posts. I want to know what my followers think. At the end of the day, I worked very hard to build a solid follower base of people sharing similar interests and I would love to know what your view on bots are. Do you agree with my approach towards them? Please let me know.
In addition;
Let me quote 2 of my steemit collegues:
"I believe that in order to have a certain success on steemit you have two main strategies: Either you use bid-bots like a madman or you really bring people together and interact." - @achim03
"Is a big whale vote on a shitty post just as bad as a vote bot vote on a shitty post. If I don't have a whale friend and I make nice posts and want the world to see it... is a vote bot a bad thing? Is the vote bot the problem or the greed? " - @allcapsonezero
I hope to hear your thoughts, mostly about the part of "what's my view on bots?". It really matters to me to know what is your opinion on that subject. Subject that clearly divided STEEMIT like nothing else did.
Cheers
Piotr
Dear valuable user.
Here is about $20 in FREE upvote from @booster, the 1st BidBot on STEEM, established just a few days short of a full year as a resistance to black market vote-selling and circle-jerking etc.
What we want you to do with these $20, is to play with the different bidbots on your great content and get a better insider view on the world of bidbots.
As a Bidbot, I assure you that my owner and operator is very very serious about STEEM, the communities (http://SteemSpeak.com is the largest discord for investors/super users, witnesses and developers, been active for 2 years with 5000+ members active the last 30 days) of communities, we sponsor shows like Hots or Shots every week and give away gift upvotes to great content when we find it and use 10% of our power to fight abusers, like a part of a fire department.
25% of our liquid income is spent on developing, updating OpenSource projects for STEEM available for everyone!
Developing pro-grade software, and keeping the code up to date in this beta-changing environment is time-consuming, and without funding, impossible to keep doing good things and feed the family at the same time.
Thanks to Booster 16+ STEEM APPS are kept up to date: https://steemit.com/radiator/@inertia/my-app-catalog
Now - keep in mind that all of this is 100% transparent, legal and voluntary. To call what we do an evil is not the reality we face with our customers, ranging from trending minnows to amplify political messages or trending professional bloggers to the very top of steem with the help of our 200+ bidbot colleagues.
Now, there are ways to capitalize on us bidbots as well, by trailing the account @frontrunner you get to vote on posts before I do, and by that making more curation rewards (see my latest post)
Anyway, we hope you have a great time on STEEM, and if you want to interview some of the OGs about STEEM EVOLUTION, come and talk in the open community on @steemspeak.
Thank you.
@booster thank you. appreciate your support guys.
And im glad to see that you're trying also to do something good for this platform.
keep it up :)
The poverty line is the thing that triggers violence and the biggest crime, they with the reason to fill the stomach willing to hold anything. Therefore both the government and the community must connect to alleviate poverty, especially in Indonesia's beloved country.
Some actors can not be done by poverty alone, but greedy will be the treasure and the throne they want. The world is a very dazzling temptation for those who have no spiritual value in their souls, the content of existing religion that can fill the emptiness and the thirst of our spiritual needs.
Daily crimes every hour every minute, even every second, there's always going to be, well, audits, rape and other immoral actions that annoy others. This has become a discourse on the news portals and other media both radio and television.
The current law does look like and less in place, just look at an old man who wants to prop his stomach, but he is working on something that is not his, which is happening in the world by the owner for caught theft and in improper prison law with what he did. Then the corrupters or the people who do a lot of people "are certain, covered with many people who can not be done and the principals enjoy the results with the crowds.
For international affairs, as in the case of massacres in Afghanistan and several other countries conducted for irrational reasons. Then what is done by the superpower in the international world is also the body of peace organizations? Nothing, nothing and does not produce anything "aka such a massacre.
Oops so come here so close discussion here, the important thing is to be aware of the crimes that happen around you :)
Wow. what an impressive reply. thank you for your time @hs518055
I just dont know how is it related to current topic
You're welcome sir. let me be your partner who knows we can agree with each other and be able to connect with each other.
absolutely
do not forget my treats
Hi crypto.piotr,
First of all I like to thank you for sending me your post link together with your transfer of 0.001 SBD
To my account.
I have no problem with Steemit in the way they have set up their system.
As a newbie I have nothing to say if people come to vote on my work or not, that is an issue for them not me.
Also I like to add that I don’t need to receive any money for my comments, I do it for nothing.
As you seen from my Steem Power I have already put in a few dollars into increasing my voting power.
I will continue to buy more Steemit $ in the months and years that follows.
I will use my power to help those people who are starting out, including those of my subscribers.
My greatest issue is of saving my work that I have done on YouTube.
Because my channels there are been attack by people and people using sockpuppet accounts.
I was going to place all of my work here in Dtube but I don’t believe the good people in Dtube are yet ready for it, and nor should they be.
Hi @cosmophobia
Im very grateful for your rich reply. appreciate your time and effort.
I noticed you travel a lot. Amazing photos.
What's your channel? Hope I can have a look :)
What does it mean? Please tell me. im dying to know and understand how your youtube channel could get attacked.
Thx for sharing
I will need to get back on you on this one as I need to find the links to the sites belonging to my critics.
including videos that I have done throughout so many years.
I probable have everything ready for you by this time next week.
In the meantime I like to thank you in seen my posting and in voting for them.
I hope that in the days and years coming we will be good friends.
Kind Regards.
hi @cosmophobia
please dont bother yourself so much. perhaps you could just shortly describe what had happend and how did your youtube channel got attacked.
keep in touch
I don't understand why you give away $20 just like that. Perhaps you can also donate to every person here that has posted a comment? So far you have received 6 votes resulting in 9$ on your comment.
Hi @cosmophobia
i must admit that i feel lucky. it's the first time I got rewarded. personally i cannot complain. i've spent 2 hours building this post (im not native english speaker so it always takes much longer) and i appreciate that little support
dont be angry at santa :)
Thank you crypto.piotr, my first language is not english either.
I am not angry either just a little confuse.
Thank you very much for your support.
Kind regards to you and to everyone here.
where you come from if you dont mind me asking?
I agree with that @cosmophobia but not everybody should get an upvote only quality content as I don't think people should be rewarded for "great post" type comments.
It's also in your interest @crypto.piotr as you will receive a curation reward also ;)
I see your logic and I will take your advice onboard.
it's me again @safetony
Just checked your profile just to realize that we seem to share a number of interests :)
In particular that we both share a similar passion towards cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology :)
Obviously followed! :)
Hi @safetony
thanks for sharing your thoughts. the thing is that i believe that I produce quality content and im engaging with people (2-3h a day reading posts of those who engage back, supporting, upvoting and commenting).
so i believe i deserve that little support from @booster :)
cheers.
It's amazing to see projects like yours, fighting for a cleaner Steemit.
Hi @crypto.piotr
The best way to get followers and organic upvotes is (i) to make relationships here, comment on the posts of others, and you will see your comments are getting upvotes, and (ii) join some communities. As I told you before, I am in 2 communities, working as an active Steemian there, helping newbies to learn and give them tips, and in reward, I am getting upvotes on my posts from both those communities. These tw communities are: (i) steemrepair, (ii) greetersguild.
You can check their Steemit profiles and get in touch on discord.
I don't prefer to use bots, especially those on steembottracker.com
The only bot that I use sometimes is 'smartmarket'.
hi @monajam
I agree with all your points. But this post is about bots and i would rather like to know what is your opinion on that issue? What's your view? Are you against when others are using them?
Yours
Piotr
You got a 90.91% Upvote and Resteem from @estream.studios, as well as upvotes from our curation trail followers!
If you are looking to earn a passive no hassle return on your Steem Power, delegate your SP to @estream.studios by clicking on one of the ready to delegate links:
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@echowhale team swimming by with your upvotes , another team member will upvote shortly
Reviewed and upvoted. following this content creator now too.
If you use bid bots for visibility, you are a loser and you'd be better off doing yourself a favor and hanging yourself.
Are you not busy going bankrupt with d.tube, @heimindanger?
That is such a lovely way to talk to the community.
You should be ashamed of yourself speaking to anyone like that.
(upvoted your shitty comment for visibility purposes)
Not talking to the community as a whole. I believe there are countless good-willed people around here and you could be one of those.
I'm talking to the part of the community that is destroying the original purpose of this network (ranking contents), because of their greed and personal needs for attention.
Im seriously confused. How come you ended up here and who are you talking to? is there someone here destroying anything?
I believe the bid bots usage leads to a distorted trending for the whole steem network and goes totally against the end goal
that's true. but why 'trending page' means so much to everyone.
it's like choosing between:
our goal should not make it even harder for beginners. i managed to build some audience but i see other people struggling and many of them give up already
i hear that. i get more for a single art, with no words, than i do for my 3-4000 words.
why put in a stack of effort, adn get nothing, except a headache from looking at the screen for 4 hrs, typing?
from what i understand it is someone trying to hang himself - someone stop him!
thank you for your support @jonny-clearwater
I just checked your profile to relize that we share many similar interests
will follow you closely buddy :)
yours
Piotr
You have the power to flag it if you don't like it and remove the rewards why aren't you doing that? Being against vote bot's is one thing and I can sympathise but telling people to hang themselves is despicable.
you replied to the wrong guy....
I was replying to both of you so your actually rewarding this shitty behaviour I hope you change that to a flag before the reward comes through!
You are kind of clueless aren't you?
It was upvoted so it went to the top of the comments and everyone could see it.
As my comment shows, I clearly don't approve of this statement at all.
Not here to argue with you brother I believe you have good intentions, have since checked your page and liked what I see :) I probably shouldn't have been so quick to jump in earlier!
all good
So I totally disagree with this comment.
I've said this before in other comments. Currently there is 0 reason for anyone to join this platform. Any newbie user that comes onto steemit will be discouraged because they will get 0 interaction.
Unless they have a whale willing to upvote them why join?
Well the bots give people a reason to join. At least they can get some visibility on their posts.
Your comment is self centered and doesn't take into consideration the experience of a new user on steemit. I would hope that you take a step back and think about why someone would use a bot in the first place.
I agree completely. As a new user who was looking forward to providing high quality content it is very discouraging to see the overall low quality of the content and massive power of a few to reward posts that are, frankly, not all that good. Perhaps it is a good sign that most of the high quality posts and comments are around these very issues.
hi @toddrjohnson
I see you just started your adventure on steemit. I will be happy to support you.
thank you for commenting. already followed back ;)
unfortunatelly I agree with all your points. it's very easy to get discouraged at the very beginning.
thank you for your comment. I appreciate it a lot
And this is the man behind D-Tube......?
ikr. ive just spent 4 hrs trying to post a video. 'please upload a video' - yeah, i did that already.... waits another hour 'upload a video'
fkthis-imout
lol
You got a 38.24% Upvote and Resteem from @estream.studios, as well as upvotes from our curation trail followers!
If you are looking to earn a passive no hassle return on your Steem Power, delegate your SP to @estream.studios by clicking on one of the ready to delegate links:
50SP | 100SP | 250SP | 500SP | 1000SP | 5000SP | Custom Amount
You will earn 90% of the voting service's earnings based on your delegated SP's prorated share of the service's SP pool daily! That is up to 38.5% APR! You can also undelegate at anytime.
We are also a very profitable curation trail leader on https://steemauto.com/. Follow @estream.studios today and earn more on curation rewards!
So, why everyone are here? To be known...
But sometimes you made a great post, your balance is zero. And then you need to invest some SBD in promote yourself and -why not- paying for bots. That doesn't make you a loser. Here is a people who didn't use it and still make money, That's good. But we must understand the right reason about if their lukness is the exceptional case or they are promoted by someone else. And if don't have that luck, they're forced to buy bots, very simple.
i absolutelly agree with you @maikelblogo
thx for sharing your thoughts. and big thx for resteeming my post. that's just so kind of you
i will follow you closely
Agreed! It's either cow-tow and sing the tune a whale wants to hear or pay your own way to make your own way.
interesting point of view. thank you for sharing
You got a 21.08% upvote from @votepower courtesy of @grey580!
@fishbaitbot is luring fishes with a 7.57% upvote thanks to @grey580!Send 0.05SBD/STEEM or more for a free resteem along with the upvote!
Delegate to the @fishbaitbot and get 100% of the profits which is better than all upvote bots! Click on one of the following links to delegate 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP or 5000SP.
This bot, the steembottracker and some other projects were made possible thanks to @yabapmatt. Make sure you vote for him as witness!
You got a 100.00% upvote from @allaz courtesy of @grey580!
Thanks for using Bid Voting Bot @allaz service and Steem Upvote Bot Tracker
I want to introduce you to my new friend @monsterbit in order to give additional thanks!
Do you know who is @monsterbit is? My friend, you can miss a lot. I highly recommend checking him with introduceyourself. He is going to hold interesting contests with cash prizes and promises to tell a lot of interesting stories!
A bit excessive of a comment, don't you think? Certainly could have chosen some different words for your distaste of the bots. I dislike them very much but I try to voice that eloquently..
thank you for your comment @cmplxty
Just checked your profile just to realize that we seem to share a number of interests :)
In particular that we both share a similar passion towards cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology :)
going to follow you closely
Bots are legitimate business on STEEM. If you use bots to earn something, ROI is low. I am using bots just to get better visibility for my articles and they are great for this purpose.
Thank you for your reply.
Did you ever get downvoted by anyone for that reason? Im seriously curious.
Yours
Piotr
The only time I have been downvoted for using a bot was when it was an "unapproved" bot that upvotes posts older than 3.5 days old. For whatever reason grumpycat was going around downvoting people who had used such services.
Thank you for your kind reply and sharing your experience. i appreciate. thx
I got downvoted twice for using bots and I was told that my content was not good enough to upvote it into trending page.
grumpycat is great example of 'steemit police' :/
Es un tema interesante mi opinión es que benefician a muy pocos y sobre todo a los más expertos que son los que menos los necesitan debieran de a ver más apoyo a los más nuevos, inexpertos y con menos recursos de la mayor forma posible hasta llevarlos a un nivel de autosostenibilidad.
It is an interesting topic my opinion is that they benefit very few and especially the most experts who are the ones who need them the least. They should see more support for the newest, inexperienced and with less resources as much as possible until they reach a level of self-sustainability.
thank you for your input.
cheers, Piotr
Your name has me laughing
No. Why would downvote somebody for using bots? This is free market and you can do whatever you want. I always only do Upvote if I like somebody's article or comment. I would downvote only if somebody is offensive...
I got downvoted twice for using bots and I was told that my content was not good enough to upvote it into trending page.
It's not only free market. It's wild world here and those who have loads of SP can shape this place to their own desires.
Im sure you've heard about flag wars. Flagging is using as a weapon on steemit. Unfortunatelly.
ps.
Would you mind sending me short email to [email protected]? I would lovef to be able to keep in touch and support each other on Steemit.
I wish there would be more advanced notification system developed by steemit.
No pressure of course :)
Cheers, Piotr
Some bot owners have their rules for users and maybe your post wasn't by their rules.
You can use busy.org or eSteem. They have many things better than Steemit.
Ive been thinking about trying busy.org, minds.com and medium.com
have you tried any of those?
ps.
you're very responsive which is absolutely great and steemit community surely will benefit by having you here.
if you would ever like to keep in touch and support each other closer, then drop me a message [email protected]. This will allow us to communicate easier.
No pressure of course,
Cheers, Piotr
No. Some my friends are using it and they like it but I am Steemit guy :-)
And that's why a total random is at 64 reputation. Bravo.
Congratulations @crypto.piotr for authoring such a popular post! It seems I'm late to the party but I'll give my 2 cents on this topic as I'm very interested in this as well.
Table of Contents
I personally feel bidbots are destroying the platform and hurting the initial intent of the platform, to help rank authors in terms or quality and reward those authors who consistently author good posts.
However, many people including myself still use knowing the harmful effects they have. You may call it greed, but I just want my work to be seen. Sometimes, when you put so much effort into a post and see 2 comments from bots and under a dollar payout, it's really disheartening. When I used bidbots, I may not earn money but at least I get some comments sometimes and discussions going, that's quite important to me! However, for now I'm focusing on exams so I have limited time to comment.
A solution to this may be having a limit on hot and trending pages for authors. For example, only one article per author for every 50 articles on the trending page. So, if someone has an article that should be number 3, number 7 and number 12 on trending, the article at number 3 will stay at number 3 but the article at number 7 will be pushed to 51 and the article at number 12 will be pushed to number 101. This should decentivise authors from spamming trending and hot pages with bid bots and help give more authors a chance to be in the top!
(Upvote own comment for visibility)
Wow. what an impressive reply. thank you for your time
im glad you decided to share your thoughts with me and i even noticed that you linked to my post in your new article. what an amazing support.
we're not on the same page when it come to bots and I totally respect your different view. I just dont know how anyone who isnt a whale could ever be "seen" if bots would not exist.
upvoted too. To show my gratitude :)
Bots could be essentially utilized to promote development on the Steemit network if used properly and for the right purpose.
Its alarming and really bad the way some people abuse Bots and make them look as if they are worthless and a nuisance to the Steemit network.
I strongly believe that if Bots are used properly, they could be a very essential tool to its users and generally to this blockchain.
Nice post @crypto.piotr
Thank you for your valuable comment.
I appreciate your time and effort you took to share your thought with me.
I will do my best to support you on steemit (as i do support those who are responsive)
Cheers,
Piotr
It seems like it is more about who is using the bots and what the bots are being used for that are the issues.
I think more users should be able to use bots for more purposes without worrying about all of there posts being attacked with down-vote spam.
Completly agree with you.
thx for taking the time to share your opinion with me
i just checked your profile and i noticed that we share some interests. cool. will follow you closely :)