Bid Bots Demystified and Reasons Why You Probably Shouldn’t Be Using Them

in #curation7 years ago (edited)

In my previous post: HOW TO SUCCEED IN YOUR FIRST MONTH IN STEEMIT, I made a brief mention about voting bots and how important they are to your success on here on Steemit. I should have clarified in my previous post and broke down the two different types - Bid vs Non-bid. Some of you have probably started using the services without knowing and finding out that you are actually losing money. If so, you are probably using a Bid Bot.

Untitled-2.jpg
Image courtesy of @yabapmatt

Now before we go any further, I will just say it outright. Bid voting is a huge gamble with little ROI if not utilized right. If used right, it can be profitable and I will discuss this further later on. However, for now, let us discuss the negatives.

As they say in Vegas, the house always wins. In this case, the Bid Bot owners. It is not necessarily their fault. For the most part, Steemians are smart and well informed. But there are also too many dumb-@ss people here on Steemit who are willing to throw away money and I will demonstrate this on Exhibit A below. It is like their acting on a different set of logic than what a normal person would act in the real world.

If I gave you a $2 and you gave me back $1 in return, would that be reasonable? I would guess that you would be jumping up and down in ecstasy. While I, on the other hand, would be screaming MURDER! This is exactly what is happening in the Bid Bot Voting right now. Steemians are giving Bid Bots free money even after everything is shown that when you put money in, you get a lot less back.

Using @yabapmatt’s tool, http://www.steembottracker.com/bottracker.html, you can see firsthand what is going on. I do not know if the perpetrators are unaware or simply idiots using this tool to profit and it backfired.

To demonstrate, I am tracking one bid Bot called @pushup just randomly. You can use the tool above and track any other bot and you will probably find one going through the same thing.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit-A-1.jpg

You can see here the Bid Bot @pushup with 17:14 left before the bidding cycle ends with 9.89 MAX Profitable SBD left before it starts giving you back NEGATIVE Return on Investment. I'm displaying the currency in SBD since you are likely bidding in SBD (and it is easier to visualize).

Within this 17-minute timeframe, people are still bidding on this Bot and the Max Profitable Bid dropped to 0.00 with 1:10 left before bidding stops.

Exhibit-A-2.jpg
1:10 Left

At this point, you would think that putting more money in is just plain dumb. @Pushup, like all the other bid bots, do not have a script or stop mechanism in place to automatically stop the bidding when the Profitability drops to zero.

Why would they? They are continually making money off idiots that keep feeding these bots money for negative returns!

Again, to be fair to the Bot owners, if idiots want to give them free money that is their problem. The problem I have with it is, they are not only screwing themselves, they are screwing other people who are expecting Positive ROI when they put their bids in EARLY. These last-minute voting people are ruining everything for them.

Exhibit-A-3.jpg
Look at the details

Clicking on the details button reveals the truth. You can see here that currently, the ROI is at -2.37% after curation is applied. That means everyone who put in a bid on this bot will be losing 2.37% of their investment. That is all thanks to those people who waited until the last minute to start bidding.

But, wait it gets better!

Exhibit-A-4.jpg
Profit margin taking a nose dive

Just a few seconds later more bids came in and the ball just keeps on rollin’ to the other side of oblivion. Who in their right mind would continue bidding after knowing they are getting 3.77% less than what they are putting in? They must have Steem to burn.

Ok, so maybe -3.77% is not too bad? Maybe you get a shot at the Trending Page with the 6.42 SBD vote? I don't think so!

To those who are bidding the last minute, you suck and you should be ashamed of ruining it for other people. Because of you, everyone is losing (except the bot owners).

Exhibit-A-5.jpg
Final round. Putting the nail in the coffin.

In some cases, you get this!



How would you like to put in 100 SBD and get back only 70.65 SBD?


The path to trending isn't a cheap one :)

I've been observing that this has been happening a lot and I don’t know if people are using @yabapmatt’s tool or blindly bidding hoping to cash in on the last minute. I am guessing it is a little of both.

Final Thoughts

My advice, if you want to use bid bots, please educate yourself and do research. Use the SteemBot Tracker Tool properly and especially keep an eye out first on the Max Profitable Bid column. If it is down to ZERO that means you are going to start losing money for the bids you put in. Do not be the Douche that votes the last minute and ruin it for everyone.

If you can see that the ROI is starting to return less and less, go find another bid bot. They all cycle back and maybe it is better if you wait for the next cycle. If you do not know what you are doing, do not touch or even look at bid bots!

One solution is that the Bot owners program their bots to stop receiving bids after the ROI goes to ZERO. MinnowBOOSTER has something like this in place so it is not impossible to implement.

I have personally used bid bots with some success by watching the patterns carefully. I always check if the bid bot has been giving out negative ROIs the last few rounds and make a decision if I make a bid on the bot. Lately, there has been many of these last-minute bidders that are killing the ROI and themselves. So I can't recommend you use Bid Bots at this time unless you absolutely know what you're doing and are willing to flush money down the toilet.

Have you used Bid Bots? Are you getting Negative ROI?

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain

All photos are taken and articles are written by Adonis Villanueva of Always Wanderlust unless otherwise stated.


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I think the bidbot owners have no interest in limiting the number of bids because it would cut their own profits.

This comment has received a 1.01 % upvote from thanks to: @discernente.
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You got a 15.24% upvote from @minnowvotes thanks to @discernente!

There is one more thing that you have not mentioned and that most Steemians tend to forget when using bid- or fixed-value-bots.
The Steem bot tracker does not (can not!) calculate the changing reward pool that depends mainly on the price of Steem in US-Dollars. So when you pay for a 1$ upvote for a new post, 7 days later, when the post is paid out, this vote might be worth 2$ or just 0.50$! Normally the swings in the reward pool are not more than 10% in a week, but in the last 10 days the Steem price did a hell of a rollercoaster ride.
The tricky part is, that the rewards pool calculates with the average price of the past few days, so the rewards kept going up until Saturday, even though the peak of the Steem price was reached last Wednesday!
Last Tuesday I saw that the price of Steem had more than doubled, but the rewards pool hadn't changed much, so I was able to get 37.23$ upvotes in return for an investment of just 7.193$ that I split between different bots (bid-bots as well as fixed-value bots). Check out my post and my wallet if you don't believe me! It confirmed my theory about the rewards pool and how to actually use bid-bots profitable!

So if you had paid 1$ for a 1,50$ upvote 10 days ago for a post that was paid out last Saturday, what seems like a really bad ROI would have be a great ROI because the 1,50$ vote would have been worth about 4$ last Saturday at payout!
Since the Steem price fell during the past few days, it currently works the other way round, so if the Steem price is not going up again, paying 1$ for a 2,50$ upvote today will probably lead to a negative ROI at the date of payout, no matter if you use a bid-bot or a fixed-value bot!

Well, of course, that can happen because of the 7-day waiting period. But it could swing the other way as well. Imagine buying votes in SBD and STEEM went down during your pay period. You can now get more STEEM with you SBD payout. Also, your visibility can be higher if you have more votes on your posts which in itself can get more votes.

Well, what I tried to say is that it is not just gambling!
Last week on Wednesday one could have paid upvote bots to upvote a post due for payout last Friday (2 days later!), knowing that the rewards pool on Friday would be higher than the rewards pool on Wednesday, since on Tuesday the price of Steem had already gone up by more than 100%, but the rewards pool had not gone up not yet!

And I am not saying that bots are bad, they can be great if you know what you are doing (but most people don't..)!

Well I know now...haha thanks you guys! <3

This is an interesting thought, but isn't it akin to trying to time the market? You're then just using upvotes as a way of "trading" crypto. You don't really know where the market is going to go between the upvote and the payout.

No, you didn't get what I mean. The rewards pool takes the average price of the past few days, so there is a delay. So when the market went up a lot today and yesterday but goes down tomorrow, the rewards pool will still go up tomorrow!

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying :)

That’s a good point as well, changes my view regarding the profitability of bid bots! Using bid bots is a big gamble, I use them as advertising for my really good posts. So I’m going to have to think about that. I want more views the hot page offers but I will have to weigh the costs.

I don't understand the people who send SBD to a bid bot after the ROI is already in minus. I have the feeling these are people if they would live in the North Pole I could sell them a freezer. Please people wake up and stop sending SBD to a bot if the ROI is in minus.

I know! WTH?!?!

It was not meant for you but for the people who send SBD after the ROI is in minus ;)

That was me scratching my head :)

That is unfortunutelly true...
Sometimes u lose, yet my statistic is win kn avarage.
Bots like @minnowbooster also sometimes lose...
@randowhale never disappointed me, but I didn't used it as much.

I like @randowhale gets sleepy fast though :)

Thanks for this detailed post. I have been reading many posts on voting bots, but my impression till now was that you always get more than what you pay. This is entirely new information for me

People are actually losing a lot of money these days with these bots.

Thanks for making people aware of this.
I've been using the bid-based bots pretty often, these last few days just for research purposes. I haven't processed the results yet, but I can say that you're really throwing away money by using them.

It might feel good to get the bid-bots to upvote your post and to have a high payout 7 days later, but if you add up all the numbers, you're simply losing tons of money.

I've been wondering why the bot scripts are not programmed to stop accepting money when the ROI has reached zero. Unfortunately, I think the answer is not that difficult: although they tell you over and over again, (most) bid-bots are not here to support you and help you grow here on SteemIt. (It's pretty hard to believe there would be so many good-hearted people that are willing to help you out by upvoting your posts for free.) The truth is that most bot owners are in because it pays!

It's nice to find someone who is exposing the fact that it's not a good idea to use the bid-based bots if you want to make sure you profit.
Most people simply promote the use of those bots.
(To be honest, I landed here trough your previous post Your First Month on Steemit - 23 Tips to Help You Succeed!, in which you actually promote using bots too, so I'd like to say: 'nice save'! ;-D

I use bots as the path to Trending. I just would never crack top 10 there without bots. So my main goal of even using the bid bots is not to make a profit from it per se, more to get to the trending page and hopefully get more votes without paying for it.

That’s something I understand. Using bots to get on the trendong page, I actually think its a good idea.
I need to grow my account before I can use this advice, but I’m definitely going to remember. Thanks for the tip!

I found the bots in mid December. I'm using them daily now to:

  • reward my real voters with better rewards - they have noticed
  • entice other curators to upvote me since my posts pay well (working!)
  • grow my sp - close to 200 additional in the time
  • grow my rep - 58 to almost 61 now
  • make additional sbd <<< I paid my January 2018 expenses with bid-bot money - $1600 usd taken out

The bots are huge win for me on all counts. I just pray to the Gods of Steemit not to take them away.

I do not use them in the first couple of days. I think "trending" and "hot" are not worth my effort since I never look at them myself.

I am in Thailand so I can "do the bots" when most of the US is asleep. This is a MAJOR benefit. I look at them in prime time and it is dismal when everyone is up. The rewards are much higher at 3 am est than 7 pm est.

I wrote a post for the bidbot crushers to try to help them do better. Anyone I see crushing a bot gets a wallet memo from me with this link. Of the people I hear back from, 90% are glad to know this information and 10% just don't care and are usually of high rep. They have very important stuffs to say and minnows be damned.

How to use bidbots https://steemit.com/howto/@fitinfun/are-you-a-bid-bot-crusher

Well, I was in Russia the previous two weeks. I noticed some bots were profitable due to the switch of time :)

Same here. Being in Belgium I can use them when the bigger part of the people ere asleep (except those in Thailand I gues 😉)

Those are the only times I end up with a little profit.

OH WOW, this is added value. The content from @adonisabril with @fitinfun's comment made me think to be careful on how i use bots. Thank you

Thanks for the information, I'm a beginner in the site and I am planning to use bots so that I can be successful without investing my own money to have steem power.
Thanks for sharing and keep it up this will really help me and the others who are new in the platform :)

You might be better off having Steem Power :)

You have to loose to win sometimes, these bid bots have to be experimented with before you can get a full understanding of how they work. There is a difference in looking at the numbers and understanding them. @adonisabril

Oh yeah, no doubt. As mentioned, I've used them to some success but as it stands, new Steemians should avoid until the fully realize the gravity of what they're getting into.

Thank you for clarifying this point

I thing steemit is now more powerfull...
In future it will be more active...
Thanks for the post....