The end of the year is near and with everybody on vacation, we are seeing an influx of bid to voting bots. Since this platform has moved from "providing and curating quality content" to "vote power for hire", people are adapting to the changing landscape. Some are able to grasp the concept easy enough, others are not so fortunate. Regardless of where one is in this game, voting bots need to be used correctly to benefit both parties (bot creators and bidders). This post is to remind people, as posters on Steemit, to fucking learn to read and understand the bidding process and the information that have been served on a diamond platter. Doing so will help everyone making better profit off of their investment as a whole and encourage more effort on creating half way decent content.
First of all, either use this website "http://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/bottracker.html" or Google "steem bot tracker" as a starting point. This website is created by Yabapmatt so that everybody can have all the necessary information at their fingertips in regards to vote bidding. It is primarily used for tracking bid timer and amount but also shows other minor promotional bots.
A quick look at "http://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/bottracker.html" will show the current bots that are available for bidding for upvotes.
Below is the explanation of the columns shown above, going from left to right:
- Bot Name: the name of the bot that you will need to send your bid to.
- Vote Value: the TOTAL amount of money that the bot can distribute per a single bidding period. This amount is split between all bidders during that particular bidding period. It is NOT distributed evenly but based on a bid amount, higher bidders get bigger vote percentage.
- Min Bid: minimum amount of bid required to get upvote from the bots, anything less will either be considered donation (you won't get anything).
- Total Bid Value: the TOTAL amount of bid money posters send in to get an upvote.
- Max Profitable Bid: - important - this is the amount of money that a single poster can send it to the bot for the HIGHEST voting percentage received. If you send more money than what this shows, you will not get anything extra for the additional money.
- Last Vote: elapsed time since the last vote from that particular bot.
- Next Vote: time until the next vote is cast.
To explain it simply, if you want to make more money from your post, you need to send in some money to one of these voting bots. They have enough voting power so that their vote will undoubtedly make you profitable, assuming you know when to vote and when NOT to vote.
You should start with the Min Bid to see if the bot takes SBD or both SBD and STEEM. After that, see if you have enough balance in your wallet for that minimum bid. Most of you will start out with zero or little money so Max Profitable Bid will not matter to you. If you have a lot of money, then you better read the above again so you don't make stupid mistakes.
Everything explained below will be the sole reason I write this garbage post. Please bear with me. I understand the urge to bleed this place dried and make a quick bucks but please at least do it in such a way that you DON'T ruin it for everyone else. Below I circle in red "Details" with an eye icon in front of it. This is what will make you a good or bad bidder.
Click on it to view the bot you're going to send your money to. The page shown below will pop up.
You see that we have "Current Round" and "Last Round" tab. For the purpose of this post, I will only talk about the "Current Round" since "Last Round" looks exactly the same anyway. Again, "Total Vote Value" is the total amount of money the bot can dish out per a single voting period. It is set by the bot creator and how much voting power was delegated to it. "Total Bids" is the total amount of STEEM/SBD that was sent to the bot from the bidders. "Total Bid Value" is the dollar equivalent of "Total Bids" or how much "Total Bids" is worth in USD.
Last but VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT
Current ROI (ROI stands for Return Of Investment, how much is your profit). This is what you use to keep track of the current vote money you would get. If you haven't noticed this before, please notice this now. It is just an estimation of your profit but it is better than going in blind.
See that it has calculated the profit AFTER CURATION, meaning this is the rough estimate of how much money you would actually get from your post. Usually a post will have author reward and curator reward. After curation includes ONLY author money, your money. Yabapmatt has taken upon himself to provide you in almost real time what you get for your bid instead of letting you wade through the math yourself. PLEASE read this prior to sending STEEM/SBD.
Why am I being so salty on this jolly day? When the family is around and nothing should trouble a soul, why am I being so toxic? Please just take a look below.
Even though ROI is not exact, but it is a good indication of profitability. Imagine you saving up for that bid, hoping to make more than a few cents only to get disappointment at the end. How shitty would you feel if you send it that bid, wait for that 7 day period before payout, only to find out that you actually LOST 10% of what you had before. Or is it better just to stay ignorant and keep sending money in and screw everyone else in that bid period because you just had to spam all your posts within 4 hours?
The solution to this is simple. Do some simple search prior to bidding to makes sure you are doing YOURSELF a favor, and then if you're generous enough, everyone else a favor. If you keep sending money without checking ROI, you are cheating yourself out of your hard earned SBD/STEEM. The only one making money then is the bot creators because EVERYONE ELSE is losing money. You are sending more money than the vote can deliver and that just screws over earlier bidders. If you are going to be a last minute bidder, it is YOUR responsibility to check that you're not going over.
If you see a low ROI of less than 10%, don't send your money in. Your post deserves better than that. Everyone's posts deserve better than that. If you can't control yourself, at least make it stay in the positive. A 3% ROI is still better than -2% on top of a 7 day waiting period. Just wait for the next period, your post has 6 days to take in upvotes.
Final tip I'd like to point out, details show bidders in chronological order, the bottom ones are the late bidders. If you are an early bidder and you're looking for someone/something to blame, scroll down on the details popup and you'll find the source of your negative returns.
This post will probably amount to shit but if just a few more people who now know how to be considerate and responsible in bidding process, my effort is not wasted. I just feel it's unfair for people who are saving up for bids and then get wrecked by ignorant late bidders. You have an entire website dedicated to help you PROFIT, with a guy who collects all the possible bots and information, providing real time profitability, even take into account the fluctuation of STEEM/SBD prices and YOU DON'T USE IT? Adding insult to injury, if it's just you who lose money, then who cares. Why does everyone beside you in that voting period must suffer YOUR bad decision?
I hope I get my point across even if I'm being an asshole. It's fine that you need to make money. You can bleed Steemit as much as you want but if your post is not making money, you won't be able to bid for upvote for long. Stop that bid, write some more, then come back when ROI is more than 10%. Your content will be better and your ROI will be better.
Or we can just cap the bid amount in such a way that ROI is always > 10%. Bot creators will make less money, will any bot creators do it? Who knows. They just might make barrier of entry high again to filter out the noise.
If you think this is important to you, please resteem. I don't give a fuck about "nice post, please follow". I just want people to not screw themselves over while screwing other people over.