I don't want to sound Apocalyptic or install FUD but I think Steemit promotions are pretty much dead now.
Recently I wrote a detailed article https://steemit.com/steemit/@gokulnk/there-is-no-free-money-in-steemit and I felt that it deserved some attention and thought of giving promotions one more try in spite of my failed attempts earlier. So I went to the promotions tabs to figure out what was the current rates of promotions for the first page. The third post had spent 136 SBD on the promotions and the fourth post had spent 100 SBD on the promotion. So I transferred 101 SBD to null to secure myself the fourth spot on the most coveted promotions or so I thought.
My post was in this spot for a day. After that it moved to the fifth. I checked and saw that somebody had bid for 102 SBD. So I had to add another 1.5 SBD to get back to my position :)
As you can see from the image or the tab https://steemit.com/promoted my post is still in the sixth/seventh position. Here are the stats from promotion.
In couple of minutes the payout of the post will be coming and it will be less than 4 SBD. So on an investment of 100 SBD I only got a return of 4 SBD and 80 new followers. Will these 80 followers be worth more than 80 SBD. Over the time I definitely think they will add more value. But if you are looking at tangibles a 4 SBD return on a 100 SBD investment is real bad.
If the above are the stats for the First page promotions posts, the numbers only get worse if you are not on the first page. I have tried promotions around the time I first joined Steemit. I tried with 1 SBD, 2 SBD and 10SBD. None of them yielded any results at all. That is because today the Promotions are like Google search results. All the efforts you put and the money invest are only valuable if you make it to the first page. If you are in the second page no body cares. If you are placed beyond that it is like you don't exist. Same is the case with Steemit promotions. This is a serious bummer for people who would like to invest anything less than 50 SBD on their posts. I feel sorry for all those users who are spending a couple of SBDs thinking that there posts will get some visibility. No they won't!! Stop spending your SBDs if it doesn't get you on the first page.
For promotions to be more meaningful I think the ROI on promotions should increase. Steemit can work on the following to increase the ROI for the users of the platform.
Steemit devs should take this up seriously. The writing is very clear on the wall.
As you can make out from the above image there is a strong correlation between the price of Steem and the contributions being done to null. So fixing promotions should be of atmost importance to steemit team. 
