Dear Steemers,

Do you ever say to yourself "Hé, let's do crazy I am gonna buy my own blogpost a 10 steem upvote" and "so what profitable bot will I use." Well beware of some losses!

source

You will notice like me - on steembottracker - that bid bots are doing over time as I call it and profitable votes are hard to get. During peak hours the larger bots receive bids totalling more than the votevalue minus curation (say 25%).
You see this if you look into the 'details' of that bid and returns are sometimes -20% and even -40%. Great news for delegators but not for any small bidder.

The other thing you see is that the amount of some bids really hits the ceiling. While writing this post it did not cost me any effort to get an example. The screenprints I just made minutes ago

Example screenprint 1:

Total bid $146 for a votevalue of $104 which after 25% curation (for the bot) leaves $78. ROI therefore MINUS 46,5% (close to what the screen says) (formula: 1 -((104*.75)/146)= 46.575.

But why?

You see in the bot Buildawhale someone bidding 30 and 61 followed by a large 50 steem bid turning all profit into a loss for the others as well. This last account apparently is not that interested in the profatibility of the vote therefore also taking down the first bidders. The bot and its delegators earn $67 this one round!

Example screenprint 2

Example 2 is taken from under Tools-"Front run the bots" where you can see what posts will get a high vote soon.
What you see (second colum) is that bids of 50, 100 or even 133 are no exception and I have seen higher ones. I promise you this goes on almost 24/7! You do not want to be crushed by these big bidders.

Advice:

• Put smaller bids on various smaller bots to spread the risk or use guaranteed profitable bots.
• If you have steempower you do not use (a while ) delegate it to a bot. On steembottracker under iSTEEMd you can select some good ones. Return per annum now is some 17% on your delegated steempower. This is a good reward for holding larger amounts of (volatile) Steem(power).

Goldrooster
and Powernap (my delegator account)