Why I Use Voting Services and Vote-Bots
For those that have been following my Steemit Essentials and Steemit Strategies posts, I have been teasing you that I would be writing this post in the future. Well here it is! Well, part 1 of 3 is here. You'll have to check back to get all the info because there is just too much to include in 1 post.
So, here is a breakdown of how I plan for these 3 posts to go. I never really know exactly until I write them, but I do have the outlines worked out in advance.
Part I - I am going to discuss whether paying for votes is profitable and what other reasons I have for using voting services and bots. I will also discuss why I think that these are valuable services for helping people achieve their goals on Steemit. I will also show you some numbers of what happens when you pay for upvotes.
Part II - I will be discussing the different voting services that I use for purchasing upvotes and showing you WHY I use these services as opposed to others. I will include a short video as well because I know I have some folks that are too lazy to read (and I like doing the tutorials on video).
Part III - I will be discussing how I determine which "bid-bots" I use and when I use them. I will show some methods in choosing a bot and include a tutorial on how to go through the bidding process on Steembottracker.com
I will cover "Resteem" Services in the next several days following these posts.
Part I - Why I Buy Upvotes
Imagine this scenario - You see two articles posted on Steemit, but you can only read and upvote one of them. They both have similar titles and similar photos and the Reputation of each of the authors is also equal or close. How do you choose? In marketing and economics, we discuss a concept called "perceived value." In this situation, most people will try to distinguish value from what they can see/observe. In Steemit, you get to see the STU value on the post before you ever click on it. That is ABSOLUTELY HUGE in marketing terms because all other things being equal, you are going to open the post that already has the most, and probably most valuable, upvotes.
Don't believe me? Think back to when you bought a slightly more expensive model of anything - a T.V., a phone, a hairdryer, etc. Most of you should be shaking your head up and down right now remembering that you paid a little bit more for the higher priced model even though there was no discernible difference other than price. Hell, people pay $800 more for an iPhone than I do for my phone. Is their iPhone $800 more useful? Not even close.
The point here is that part of the problem that many of you reading this post have is that someone looks at your post and sees that you have only .24 STU in upvotes and they have already judged that it is likely less valuable than other posts. Is this fair? Maybe not, but it doesn't matter. Steemit wasn't built on fairness.
I will give you another example. I see someone who posts 20 times a week with pictures and very little text while I'm curating and you know what I do? I look directly at their payouts. If they are under a $1.0 STU, I run the images through Google and do a plagiarism check on the text. You know what I find? Over half of them are stolen photos and/or plagiarized.
For those of you who are wondering why I take the time to do this, IT IS CALLED CURATING! Curating is not running around with hugs and roses for anybody that can hit the "Submit" button on a Steemit post.
Okay Jerry, what's the lesson here? The lesson is that people don't want to waste their time reading posts they think nobody else wasted their time reading. In sales, we call this negative association. It's the real reason nobody ate lunch with the poor, fat, ugly boy in high school. Not because that person wasn't wonderful and would eventually go on to own some billion dollar multi-national company with a smoking hot wife. Hell, if we had known, we would have all been slobbering over who got to sit next to him (kind of reminds me of the commenters on a Jerry Banfield post).
So, the real lesson here is that if you don't project value on your posts, then you are not going to attract people to even READ your posts and see how awesome, creative, and talented you are.
Reason #1 - I use upvote services and bots to project value on my posts so that other people believe I'm credible. Of course, if my content is shit, they will move on quickly (or not, see the trending page for some examples). Short to Long Term Strategy.
Reason #2 - I want to attract a larger audience with my posts. This means that if by chance someone stumbles upon my article, they will see the $$$$ and think to themselves, maybe this is interesting. This kind of goes along with #1, but also because I write Steemit advice so if someone 3 months from now does a search on voting bots, they will come across a popular (see $$$$) post that has the answers. What are the chances they will check out my posts for more good info - Bingo - nearly a 100% chance. Midrange to Long Term Strategy.
Reason #3 - Get free, easy upvotes from people that don't understand how curation works. Yes, people will upvote high paying posts thinking that somehow that will give them extra money in curation rewards. If someone reading this right now is ALSO thinking that is true - Please Stop NOW. Go to my article on curation rewards and then come back and read the rest. You only enhance your curation rewards when you beat the big votes to the post. Short Term Strategy.
However, you would be surprised how many upvotes I get from trails, random folks, and others that never view, read, or utilize all the Steemit goodness in my posts. See my SP posts from 2 and 3 days ago - I promise you that at least 100 of those upvoters never even opened the article let alone read it. I don't care - I got the upvote. Those of you who read these things I post have a significant advantage over your minnow peers.
#4 - PROFIT - EWWW! You're so greedy Jerry. Whatever. I'm here to make a profit off my investment and time. So are you. Everybody that says they aren't here for a profit are either lying out of guilt (because profit is BAD) or lying because their account is worth shit and they've been here for a year. I find that many of the "no self-vote" crowd fall into these categories. Just saying. Short and Long Term Strategy.
The Part We Have All Been Waiting For
Is buying upvotes profitable? - YES - The crowd goes wild!!! - NO - Stunned faces and a few tears.
You can buy votes and make a profit, but only if you do it right and there is a minefield of factors involved. Some of you have been gingerly walking through that minefield and that is why many of you are missing legs or at least a few toes. Am I right? I wish you could see how many are nodding their heads, YES.
When buying upvotes you can lose your ass. How do I know this? Because buying upvotes was my weight loss plan in February and some of March. I didn't think I would have an ass left I lost so much $$$ on buying upvotes. I almost delegated all my SP and walked away from Steemit.
Let me show you why and how. I made these great little visual aids in PowerPoint - take a look.
I made this up a couple days ago when the market was slightly higher. (yes, I plan my posts and prepare that far in advance - Quality Content)
If you took $36 USD of your money and bought Steem, you would be in the column on the right. If you used that money to buy SBD, you would be in the column on the left. The numbers here are based on buying upvotes that give you a 200% upvote on your SBD. I use 200% because it is what I consider the breakeven amount for an upvote. I'll explain why a little later. You'll notice that the left column leaves you with a 5.5% loss at the end of 10 days. This slide shows you how we get to that number.
Starting with our 11.25 SBD that we bought and paying for an upvote of 200%, we would get a 22.5 STU payout on our post from the upvote we paid for. That number is then reduced by 25%. After that it is split evenly between SBD and the "value" in SP. That "value" is the key. I don't get 8.44 SP, I get 8.44 divided by the current price of Steem. Therefore, my SP return on my first paid for upvote is only 2.34 SP. But I still have the 8.44 SBD and I can continue to buy upvotes with it with diminishing returns until I just about breakeven. In our example after 10 days, I'm -5.5%. After 20 days, I'm pretty close to even.
I would have been better off just buying Steem and converting it to SP and upvoting myself with the extra .002 that I would get for 10 Steem.
I know, many of you were hoping for better news and others are saying, "See, I knew those things were scams." Well, not so quick. You notice that I used the threshold of 200%. Why? Because it worked out close to breakeven and it is an easy number to work with when evaluating the success or failure of a "paid for" upvote.
There are two huge benefits of knowing about this 200%. We can still be profitable if we do 1 of 3 things and hopefully ALL 3 things because my goal is to get back more SBD than I paid (10% more to be exact), but a minimum of the exact amount I paid (plus I get the SP as a bonus). Example - I pay 20 SBD for upvotes - Goal receive 22 SBD in rewards and the SP with a minimum of 20 SBD.
#1 Thing - Get more than 200% from our paid upvotes. Yes, it is possible and many services pay more than 200%, but you have to find them and they have to still have some voting power when you do (timing your posts is important especially on weekends). For instance, a 240% upvote on day one after our purchase changes the whole dynamic of the SBD spend in the example I gave you above.
#2 Thing - Lower the amount that is paid out to curators (25%) by increasing the amount paid to YOU in curation by upvoting your own post immediately. Yes, it is possible to gain a HUGE chunk of the curation rewards for yourself as the author. If the paid for upvotes take place before 30 minutes, then you get a portion of those curation rewards also. Now, the upvote services and the bots know this already. It is no secret. However, some of them don't care because they want to sell their vote. Also, some will upvote you less than 200%, but still upvote you in the 1st 10 minutes after the post goes live on Steemit. The trick is finding the balance.
#3 Thing - Your going to get more people to upvote your content because you don't look like the poor, fat, ugly kid at the lunch table. More people are going to be exposed to your post. Not because you're on the trending page necessarily, but because you are going to be out their on Discord, Kryptonia, or anywhere else telling them about it. They are going to see the value on it and take a look. If your stuff is good, you're going to gain votes and followers. Then you're going to answer all their comments and make friends. You, my friends, are going to be at the center of the "Cool Table" and that leads to profitability.
Why does this work? Nobody likes a loser. If you invest in yourself, people will believe in you too. If you don't trust your content enough to advertise it, then why are you even here on Steemit. You thought it would be easy. Guess again. If your content is high quality, then you will expand your audience with more upvotes and visitors to your posts. It is like seeing the empty restaurant in the evening. You ask yourself, "why isn't anyone here? Is the food or service bad?"
Imagine I told Domino's Pizza that they would be guaranteed a 95% return on their advertising budget in 10 days. They would sign up in an hour for my advertising services. Why, because they believe in their product and know that once people try it, they will come back, tell their friends, etc. A 5% loss is nothing to promote your product and here you don't HAVE to lose that 5%.
The greatest thing about buying upvotes is that it is advertising with minimal potential losses if you do it right. Even better is that it is accessible on every level. If you're poor, there are still services available to you. You don't need 10 SBD to start. You can buy profitable upvotes right now for 0.05 SBD. I can afford to buy where I want, but I still support some small vote bots and services because they give profitable returns. I will talk about some of those tomorrow and the next day.
Some people disagree with purchasing upvotes. I am not here to argue with them, but the system isn't changing so we need to learn how to work within the system. The arguments that I hear most often are these:
Fairness - It isn't fair that those rich people pay to get their stuff on the Trending Page. Everyone has access to the vote purchasing services. Yes, they have a monetary advantage, but good content has a way of finding viewers if it is promoted in the slightest. Life's unfair sometimes, adjust and overcome or quit. If this was EASY everybody would be doing it (why you see videos saying it is easy, to get more people doing it and buying Steem).
Curation Theft - The Bots/Whales come along and "Steal" all the curation rewards. Really? Please go read my post on curation and how it works if you believe this. This argument is for the intellectually lazy. Curation is paid on voting weight and position AND the first 30 minutes window. Every big upvote I pay for goes after my self-vote and INCREASES my curation rewards. If this confuses you even after you read my post on curation, then there is no hope for you. For you, there is Instagram.
Concluding Remarks and Recap
- Paying for Upvotes is GOOD.
- Paying for Upvotes CAN be profitable.
- Paying for Upvotes CAN lose you money if you don't plan and execute well.
- People who hate paid upvotes usually hate puppies and birthday parties and should be avoided.
- Get a #kryptonia account and pay for upvotes with FREE #superiorcoin and meet new friends. (I had to throw that in because I love Kryptonia).
Send me comments that are good and get a free upvote on your comment. Send me crappy comments and get nothing.
Come back tomorrow to learn more about which strategies I use with purchasing upvotes and some of the services. You'll be glad you did. Below is a list of my posts that you will find valuable. Read them, it will help. Or don't and continue to make .78 STU while praying for a Curie upvote.
My Posts That You Should Have Read Already
Steemit Strategies
Curation Rewards
Comment Strategies
4 Month Recap
Communities and Focus
Leasing SP
Delegating SP
Leasing/Delegating Tutorial Video
Steemit Essentials - Tools/Resources
Kryptonia
Steemworld
SteemSupply
Qurator Community
Steemauto
GinaBot
Discord
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All intelligent comments get an upvote for effort (even if I disagree).
Send me a copy of one of your posts and I will try to read it quickly.
All images are mine or downloaded from Pixabay.com
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