When I joined Steemit in June this year the first upvote-bot had just seen the light of the day in form of @randowhale. It was a gamble for an upvote between a certain percentage span. You had to send a few SBD and usually got a bit more back. By then people were mostly disgusted by the idea of buying your votes. This has changed drastically for good reason. In the beginning it was all about making a profit. All bots that were available have been mostly used to make a little profit. With the appearance of the bid-bot @booster you could even make dozens of Steem profit. Few people used or understood them. It was the Wild West.
However, in the summer of 2017 a huge amount of new people joined Steemit and looked for ways to make it big there. All over the platform you now find this new generation of self-promotors using all the upvote bots available. And they are quickly reaching a big chunk of Steemians with this strategy by popping up on the hot and trending pages. Otherwise they would grow much slower and have huge problems finding their audience – a common problem on Steemit as for now.
Some of the bot users deliver very poor content to abuse the bots but the Steem market self-regulates that usually soon enough. Most of the content that earns beyond the upvotes from the bots has been gone through the proof of brain before and enriches the Steemit culture. This is what makes Steem so powerful.
The Steem Bot Tracker has changed everything
After @booster became a big success more and more bid-bots appeared. They all require to track the incoming bids or play a gamble and potentially make a big loss. That was tedious work for the strategic ones and often ruined by those who gambled and blindly through in their money. Even with a flourishing bot-economy it was complicated and confusing. Nevertheless, users have transitioned from melking the reward pool to promote their posts with little to none profit at all.
With the recent appearance of Steem Bot Tracker everyone can now easily see exactly how much these bots upvotes are worth, when they are voting next and how much is still profitable. All in nearly real time. This has lowered the entry bar for people and has enhanced the chances for everyone to use them right without creating big losses for all participants in a bid for one of these whale upvotes.
When a bid-cycle comes to an end and the bot still hasn’t been over-bid, the bot will be highlighted in green and the tool sends a browser message to you if you have allowed that. That makes it really easy for everyone to not miss any good opportunities. And people send bids like crazy during this small time window.
This has another interesting side-effect: People farm the bots and bring the profitable bids down to 0, basically guaranteeing that nobody is making a profit at all. Of course, there are still rounds ending up being very profitable. But most bots are actually being used on such a high frequency now, combined with people who seem to have specialized on doing late bids, that there is rarely a number higher than 0. And that brings us to the next game changer.
Millions of Steem delegated to bots
As of today, the worth of all bid-bots combined is over $300 (that includes @bellyrub running 2x as fast with 50% power currently – otherwise it would be over $500!). If you just use $200 of that power you will most likely trend for days with your post. And if you bid smart and used the tracker, you might even have avoided big losses and got the promotion basically for free. From the moment on @bellyrub has received its latest delegation and creating a $250 upvote worth for one 100% upvote it immediately created this new phenomenon: The bought post that trends and probably makes money and tons of new followers.
There were a few abuses of that power with the new @bellyrub where spam posts started to trend. But they have been downvoted and @bellyrub is working on a fix to stop high bid abuses. I am sure this was not the last time we see people trying to squeeze these bots. The good thing is that with more broad usage this becomes unprofitable very quickly. The benefit so far is out of the question: Many good Steemians got their recognition in the community thanks to the bots.
Where does this all lead?
The bots have gotten a good reputation among more Steemians. Their helpfulness has outranked their shadow aspects. But we still need more data and time to tell where this is all going. Some people on and out of Steemit argue that this is a huge problem of the platform. I think it is a perk and will rather accelerate power users on Steemit and support those who want to get heard. It shouldn’t be such an important tool in that endeavor, though. I hope that the upcoming community accounts on Steemit will help with that by giving Steemians a better way of coming together. But I am sure that the bots will play a huge role in that as well!
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I am familiar with the love/hate relationship with bots. I see them no different than Facebook where you make a post and it asks you if you want to boost it for $5.
In fact, on Facebook it has been found as much as 70% of the impressions were fraudulent. I’m going to cite this but there are many studies on this.
As the owner of @buildawhale I have two primary objectives, not to manipulate the windows in any way and to reward and encourage quality content.
We do not use or sell our voting power outside of our bidding windows. We also offer to value-add services rewarding awesome authors with great content. The first is our daily Curation Digest where we feature at least five of our favorite posts from 300-400 posts daily. We also have an author of the day up to three times a week where we reward an author with $100-$150 worth of votes.
I am also working on developing a new community project in the near future.
I have to pay for all 2.2M steem power I have, but I am always trying to get better prices so our bidders don’t have to lose for me to win. It has been difficult and the first 2 months were operated at a loss. I continued to do this as I had to get bigger to support the amount of users using @buildawhale while offering them profitable votes. Our value added services (Curation Digest, Author of the Day, PreVote Club) all offer value on top of the instant vote most people are looking for.
Build a whale is dope. If you ever have any work that can be done remotely would love to try to help out!!
I love how you guys have pushed @buildawhale to the second biggest bot on Steemit in such a short time. thank you for the insight into your business and for your care about quality and community. I think all big bots share that sentiment and that is one of the reasons why it benefits the platform.
Facebook advertising is very ineffective. Doing that on Steemit creates a dialogue like nowhere else. I will use this advantage to do some promotional posts for my projects soon. I rather have 1000 Steemians read my post than 50k likes on Facebook.
How exactly can one get on your curation list for this nice reward?
We were the biggest for a bit but it was never about that.
@buildawhale grew at a rapid pace (20K, 32K, 50K, 217K, 470K, 970K, now 2.2M with around a week apart) because our bidding windows kept filling up and wanted to continue offer value.
I plan on doing one more massive jump soon but I think that will be the extent of our growth. I think we have enough to offer value to many users on a daily basis.
My primary focus now is to reach more people with our Curation Digest, expand it into new native languages, and offer new unique services. I have a few ideas I playing with, but I want to come out with something new and different.
How did you make 'big jumps'? Is that just regular bot income (if so, how is that a big jump instead of regular ongoing growth)?
The big jumps are just me taking larger risks with my own capital. It wasn't until last week I started to come close to break even.
That sounds super interesting. I can't wait to see what you are coming up with! :)
I think you (@themarkymark) will find your innovative family with @earthnation
I am Doron Kutash, @the-source , (www.thesource.network),
and am working at the Heartquarters of Earth Nation, building systems for a planetary transformation into Paradise on Earth. Keep up the great work! :)
You'd like someone to do translations regularly @markymark?
We are not doing translations, the plan is to do native language curation. Spanish people curating Spanish content for example.
Appreciate your investment in the platform!
Thanks
Oh I thought your updates and possibly other posts.
Yes that's a good idea
You rock @buildawhale @themarkymark
Keep being entrepreneurial, innovative, and building systems that help "we the people" become empowered to bring in new/free the people media, and a better world!
It is good that you share this. Especially with the increasing bot debate. We need to be careful how we handle vote buying/leasing.
First of all what do you mean by breaking even. Using the platform costs nothing. If you would have some setup costs, I imagine they would be solved already as you get around $100 sbd every 2.4 hours.
I hope whatever you do, you asking what will be best for the community.
Leasing steem is extremely expensive, I have been financing 6,000 steem/week out of my pocket to kick it off the ground. It has been at a loss until last week where I finally hit a break even.
It is a great effort, however, can you reach to some whales or steemit inc. for funding the curation part, I believe some big amount of SP is just sitting. I mean that @buildawhale will be profitable for time being when it will get more attention.
However, curation does have some cost: remuneration to curators, upvoting cost on quality posts and maintenance of hardware.
The curation is the best part the @buildawhale possess. If it can be scaled up, it will be huge boon for steemit community.
I have been trying and it has been my primary focus lately but it is difficult.
Well man, these piece is by far one of my favorites. @bellyrub and the other bid bots should be seen as a promotianl tool for content and should be used for posts that the user should know right off the bat if it is quality content, because there is no profit to be made from them any ways.
If you post something that is far less worthy, your bid and upvote will not be used as intended because others will not even vote on such posts, the market will even itself out and soon people will realize this and hopefully use it to promote good content.*
I agree. I love Bellyrub for the promotional value, and all the rewards I can bring to my curators even if the vote is a loss or break-even.
Abusers must take a large risk - voting bad content has to make it to payout without having votes removed, and they have already paid. I hope you don't have to deal with too much of that.
PS - I added you to my witness roster!
Hey man thank you very much for that, We are making it a better way to be able to use the 100% feature.
What it looks like will happen is, a cap on the bids maybe 50-70 SBD also adding them to the high risk category in a blacklist with 2 warnings.
1st warning:
2nd warning:
This might seem kind of drastic, but we feel something like this might be done.
We cannot rely on the outside users to flag those types of posts so we find it a better way to be proactive.
"a cap on the bids maybe 50-70 SBD"
I'm not usually in favor of caps, but that seems totally reasonable. It will prevent someone monopolizing Bellyrub's entire next vote as soon as bidding opens. Bidding more than 70 does seem a bit excessive...and risky for everyone bidding.
"1st warning: un-vote, refund."
I don't think that's drastic at all, but I'm sure people will still fail to read and do it anyway.
I agree, also regarding the caps. As a "decentralized" there should be no boundaries some users have come to me with anger in regards to this.
@bellyrub is an auction bot and the market dictates it so.
It is a complex situation, There have been some high bids sent in resulting in this mind set.
The cap is still in debate, as far as it goes the more refund/banning is and will be set in place disregarding the cap.
That sounds like a good plan. You could add a function to bellyrub to call it for moderation, leaving a comment below the post to inform others as well. You would save yourself the trouble of manually checking all posts.
@zeartul I definitely agree with you. They need to be used when you see its useful and quality content for the steemit community and crypto world. upvoted your comment. @gold84
To be honest quality is based on the people around you, you might think your post is of high quality, but others might not think so.
The main reason for this is we don't want @bellyrub to be used for a post to jump to the trending page knowing it is low quality* trying to avoid spammers landing there.
The sheep might like to think there is a labor theory of value but value is ultimately all subjective. Publilius Syrus:
"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it."
@zeartul I understood that, and agree. As time passes mopre people will give the correct use to it. @gold84
Thank you @zeartul. You have helped the most from all bot holders to create a community and understanding around the topic with regular posts and updates and your public engagement. You gave this movement a face and now you hold the biggest SP pool with @bellyrub. Well earned.
Thank you @flauwy your support from the start has been well noted.
By the way: Is it still possible to send Steem instead of SBD to @bellyrub? Right now that makes more sense due to the low price.
At the moment @bellyrub is configured to only accept SBD.
You always say the right words, totally agree with you.
Without @Minnowbooster my awesome-formatted posts with very good content would still be worth 2 cents because nobody would see them.
Minnowbooster does exactly what it says, boost Minnows so that they have a chance on Steemit.
Like you said, people boost their bad content but nobody else will upvote them or follow them because bad content is still bad content so there is no problem with upvote bots.
The only people who seem to be outraged at bots are the ones who already have high voting power. They are just angry that Minnows can now compete with them in the hot section.
Anyway. I have looked all your videos on Youtube when I started Flauwy.
Und sie haben mir einen guten Start auf Steemit (ohne Investment) ermöglicht dank deiner Information und durch die Bots selber ohne die ich wahrscheinlich schon längst Steemit verlassen hätte.
Denn ohne Investments und ohne upvotes Bots brauchst du es hier gar nicht erst versuchen.
Hey man, I have checked out your profile over the past few days and I love it. I can tell that you have watched some of my videos since you picked up on many elements I mention. I like the overall style you created.
I am sure there will be a much larger number of bots in the future who are dedicated to communities. i think that will be great.
I read your post.you have written well. Very informative post about bot. How many days have you used bot @flauwy?
I have used bots since July.
How can I get this, can you give me some idea? @flauwy
You can start using the Bot Tracker I have linked above and inform yourself about the bots. @bellyrub is the biggest so far so you might want to start there.
Lots of thanks
Hi @glauwy. Can you use @bellyrub if your SP is lower than 300? Because for some reason I thought I heard you have to have at least 500SP.
Thank you Flauwy, it is good motivation to hear that from one of the people you have learned from. It is basically validation that I am on the right track.
Yeah there will probably be more bots... and I already know where I will go to learn more about them (or even find out there are new ones)....
:-)
Hey @flauwy,
at @boomerang we implemented a code to stop votes for the ones blacklisted by @cheetah, and we are in close contact with the steemcleaners team which to a tremendous job. We also believe in a clean steemit, where the bots are used for a better visibility. You can check our blog, where we post when changes are done.
Also our delegators earn 100% of the SBD received for the votes and are transfered every voting round.
Thank you of better said vielen dank für den Beitrag!
Thank you for your update, @boomerang! These things are greatly appreciate and help to make Steemit a better place. We can solve a lot with smarter bots that help us to filter good content.
Are you guys a German team?
We totally agree that Steemit needs to be a better place. That is why the bot operates like this, giving 100% of the revenue of the votes to the delegators. We don't share revenue with blacklisted users by steemcleaners. We tell them to undelegate.
Let's put it this way, we speak also German between other languages.
As a newbie on steemit, i do appreciate the help from bots. But the flooding of comments gets ridiculous after one too many bids.. I realise now that i have probably ruined my articles reputation with the high amount of advertisement in the comment section >.<.
Makes me wish for bots with more discretion so they don't scare away actual readers.
Yeah, I know what you mean but I wouldn't overrate that. As long as you deliver good content you have nothing to fear. Maybe some see that as a negative but most will not care about that and are rather glad that you stuck out of the masses and enriched their day.
I like that recent post thing at the bottom. Concerning upvote bots, one thing I beyond helping people get content out and find their audience that I think is important is that it keeps capital flowing into the network to ensure that people can move their money how they want.
Good post with clear information ;)
I thinks bot is can helped a community ;)
This is very informative on the trending in bot use over time. Apparently a lot of people are using bot tracker. I do notice that there are lots of last minute bids. I wonder what the next round of sophisticated bot strategy will look like?
That is a very good question. I considered myself a specialist when it came to bots profit. Now all previous strategies don't work anymore and all you can do is stay sharp and wait for a 99.99% opportunity and hope nobody else does the same. Kinda risky.
My favourite strategy is now to see the bots as 100% promotional tools and ignore direct potential gains. Bid early and hope that others don't or at least honor the profit barrier and don't make it a loss for everybody.
This is so crazy, but I have been using them also. At first, I converted all my sbd into steem power but lately I have been sending some to the bots.
There is profit to be made delegating to the bots too. I have never interacted with bots like this before!
Thanks @flauwy for all your always great and very helpful information.
I am still a bit confused with all these bots because there are so many of them and sometimes I see people commenting that they didn't get the bots upvote or that they did but it is less than what they send to the bot.
If you are using @bellyrub, @booster and @buildawhale you are pretty secure. they have good services and high votes. If something goes wrong you can send proff to them and you might even be reimbursed. Try to avoid during the upvote phase, only when they are between 98% and 99.99%. When you send at 100% the vote will go to the next round but I had cases when that didn't work. I think that they all fixed that but I am not certain. Better to avoid that brief time window. Use the tracker and you will be informed.
Thank you so much @flauwy for your really helpful response. I use @buildawhale and I tried once @bellyrub, but never got upvote or my money back, so now I'm afraid.
Where or how can I get the tracker?
thank you for your help
Please let me know what the issue you had was.
Thank you @zeartul for responding to my concern, and actually I just checked that post that I have sent 1SBD and for a day I didn't get the upvote and I even checked the next day and didn't see it, but now that I actually checked it did receive an upvote from @bellyrub, which I am grateful for.
Very sorry for the confusion, and I am very grateful for this great support you provide for us here on Steemit.
Very sorry again and thank you
https://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/bottracker.html
Thank you a bunch.
Definitely worth an upvote and a resteem :]
I really appreciate it! :)
Interesting discussion and I agree with you. Bots are to make yourself visible, not profit on them. With minnowbooster we have the perfect opportunity to regulate that profit to never make a loss, regardless of others trying to get a vote. I would not want to be in a window with someone putting in 75 sbd.
MinnowBooster now has a whitelist that allows consistently good authors to have a shot at trending.
Something to think about. New users need to use every tool available to rise above the copy and paste crowd.
Exactly! And you can use the few SBD you earn to step by step raise the bar of paid votes without having to invest into Steem.
img credz: pixabay.com
Nice, you got a 52.0% @peaceandlove upgoat, thanks to @flauwy
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @flauwy to be original material and upvoted(1.5%) it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
@minnowbooster is literally the best bot on Steem. There's no one "profitable bid" as every bid makes over 100% profit.
You don't gamble with your SBD, and you can safely and reliably predict how much you'll be upvoted with. Also, the upvotes aren't in set intervals (e.g. every 1.2 hours or something) and they come almost immediately!
I really liked your post. The game certainly has changed for sure but it certainly is true about gaining a lot more followers when you hit the trending page. I recently hit it for the first time in probably 8 months and increased my following substantially.
I just followed you. Great stuff!
In the beginning of bots appearing, it was confusing. Now I love the ease of use to promote someone who has put in value and time on content. Useful advice deserves reward @flauwy
When I think of the good work being done by @cheetah and @steemcleaners to warn about copy and paste for those who may not be aware of their errors, it is a good system of warning.
Finding out more on those running bots, I delved deeper and found that you could further support by becoming a witness to many of the guys and gals putting in time to make this place rock.
This technology has paved a way for bright coders to make some money and it is overdue even when you start out and literally chew your nails to the bone, I congratulate you for doing something different and succeeding.
@flauwy
No smoking Campaign 🚭
This post has received a 5.56 % upvote from
thanks to: @flauwy.
For more information, click here!!!!
The Minnowhelper team is still looking for investors (Minimum 10 SP), if you are interested in this, read the conditions of how to invest click here!!!
This wonderful post has received a bellyrub 12.26 % upvote from @bellyrub.
This post has received a 17.51 % upvote from @buildawhale thanks to: @flauwy. Send at least 1 SBD to @buildawhale with a post link in the memo field for a portion of the next vote.
To support our daily curation initiative, please vote on my owner, @themarkymark, as a Steem Witness
Destroy All Bots!
This post has received a 6.29 % upvote from @boomerang thanks to: @alexvan
@boomerang distributes 100% of the SBD and up to 80% of the Curation Rewards to STEEM POWER Delegators. If you want to bid for votes or want to delegate SP please read the @boomerang whitepaper.
This post is is very helpful! :) That tracker is great!
Would you like me to share this post with about 20+ Google+ Communities (in the hundreds of thousands of people in the groups combined)? These communities will be the right audience for your content, and draw in many new followers to your feed over time!
Send at least 1 SBD to @the-source with a "post link" and "a few keywords" in the memo field, for a Trial!
Awesome post Flauwy! This tool indeed can be very helpful ! I remember when you made a post about bellyrub and explained how it worked. I got some very nice boosts using it there for a while until everyone caught up and the competition got a bit more intense
Upvote bots can help new people like me, investing 1$ or something to make posts "looks better".
The problem is some of that boosters allow a single person to unfairly put a post in trending and get +100$ of profit.
great info, thanks!
Good post @flauwy. Sorry been out for a while. But yeah, bots are taking over. Is it good for @steemit? I dunno bro
Thanks for the Steem Bot Tracker link didn't know it before and it is very helpful.