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RE: If You Use Upvote Services Please Read These Two Posts
Bots do nothing but make easy money.
First, you just pay them your hard earned SBD instead of powering up and getting a stronger personal vote.
Second, there is no quality evaluation in those votes, eg. you can just upvote a meme for 100$ if you can afford the right bid.
On the other hand, there are some votes and users who offer free services for minnows (totally free or asking for a minimum upvote on specific posts), which can help noobs make a difference in their payouts. But those services IMO are harmless and aiming at boosting new users.
The point is, we need to find the right balance and educate ourelves ethically in order to be able to discern when it is "fair" to use services and when not.
The only way I boost my posts is by using the busy.org service which gives you a small upvote.
My only problem is that the effort you put on a post doesn't always get reflected in the upvotes. Not only in the payout but in the number of upvotes. It's all if someone big notice you or resteem you and many other influences.
I had a look to your profile. I think I can help you a bit. Contact me on discord!
Well it's totally different for minnows, bots help make it to the hot page, but you can't close your eyes to the bigger picture. I used them too in the beginning, but I have quit doing so.
I know how it feels when your hard work is left unoticed and it hurts more to see others putting minimum effort and getting the fat rewards because they happen to know the right people or buy their way up. I think if you listen to what @trumpman has to say you will see a difference ;)
I had to stop using bots the minute i realized all of this. sure, it made my blog look deserted, but it's better that way than being seen as what you're not. not to mention the loses incured whenever steem drops in value.
It is true, blogs look deserted without the whale support and if I didn't have people backing me I would probably earn 2-3$ on every post. The point is, if you go through the platform and meet people, comment on other people's posts (genuine comments, not the "nice post" kind) sooner or later you will get others around you; on the condition that your content is of value.
And as you can see, certain communities reward the effort and time someone spends on their posts. So, as long as there are such projects, we should try to keep the value of the platform high. :)
Getting involved in a community is a great way to make some new friends and followers. I jumped back into steemit and am doing just that! I am also helping build a community as well, because it is important that we embody the change we want to see in the world. :)
It’s hard to talk fair here cause it’s so relative. I don't believe users having voting power based on steem power is fair sometimes but it’s part of how the system was designed and we probably wouldn’t have come this far without it like that.
In any case, you sum up upvote bots pretty well.
regarding your first point - powering up won't get your SP up any quicker than using a bot. not while SBD/STEEM are almost at parity.
your second point stands however.
Powering up takes time and devotion to the platform. It's a long-term investment that, unless you want to put in some real money and buy sp to make a "decently strong" account here, you have to put some of your earnings in. I didn't reach my current sp only curating and writing, I bought, I powered up and all of that did not happen in a month, I worked in here for days and days and I still try to, given my restricted time (a girl has to work in real life too). Don't misunderstand my tone, I only want to clarify what you might got wrong.
Gist: Invest time and effort and you will become something. Came here for $-at-an-instant? Alt+F4 straight away! :P
I'm not sure you get what I"m saying.
10 SBD to power up will yield around 12SP
10 SBD in to a bot will yield around 10SBD and $10 worth of SP ~ 3SBD.
both of these strategies can be part of a long term game, or "time and devotion" to the platform as you call it.
One is clearly more profitable than the other with the current STEEM/SBD conversion rate.
I don't believe your math is correct. Many bots are actually a loss from the original investment. But let me address the math first. My first post for example a couple of weeks ago says it earned 1.74. The breakdown on that came to .67 SBD and 0.17 SP. The remaining says curators got .4, how that was broken down I have no idea.
So let us say I spent 1.74 SP to get that in upvotes. I don't see where I am making all this mad profit at. It looks like a loss to me, but one I incur because it gets eyes on my post. If I don't incur that loss, my post scrolls off the page into oblivion within 30 seconds (not making this up, just now I looked and all the new posts before it adds to the page was 31 seconds and less).
This problem with visibility will only compound as the site grows, just as we saw on the Kindle platform with self publishing. The bots were a predictable result, as the promotion companies like Bookbub and Freebooksy are to self publishing.
Contrary to what some are feeling here, the bots are necessary in my opinion. And these ideas of mad profits sure haven't been the reality that I have been seeing.
Too bad when the site grows more, bots will be only an option for well-established members that already get votes by other people. I hope you have become one by then otherwise you won't be able to afford them.
depends of course on the bot that you use, but if you're getting 1.74 worth of upvotes, you should not be paying 1.74SBD. you would be paying more like 0.6-0.7SBD.
That's why you think my math is wrong.
And yes - the problem is absolutely with visibility. one of the first things I noticed when I came here is how damn hard it is to find content. They should have a similar structure to reddit.
Even I agree that it is very hard to find a content here and curate. In that aspect the platform should improve a lot.
I had in mind minnows that need a week to make 10$ at the same time dolphins or older users pay 20-30$ every day for bot-votes.
Plus, don't forget what you lose from curation rewards distribution.
The game has so many ways to be played and it is nice to see it from many points of view.
Yes definitely can't forget curation.
There's a lot of ways to go about it like you said, and no one way lasts for too long before something changes and you have to reassess...
Also when you power up something extra up there are some people that notice that. People who appreciate the fact that you care for the long term :)
Steemit community is still very small and I think that the most beneficial to the whole community would be to bring the people to the platform.
For 10 "screen dollars", you need about 36.000 Power.
Is it really that much?
Well, after 100 days, I have 800, so it's reasonable to expect people to have 1000 Power after 200 days.
So, you need to have 30-40 friends who have stable growth, and by the end of the summer - you can have steadily, "guaranteed" income comparable to East European salary by spending several hours of your hobby time.
Bots are stupid thing in a long term
yeah but I would argue that I am still caring for the long term, by the fact that I haven't taken any money out of steem, and the fact that I remain invested in the platform. Fact of the matter is I am supporting some of the businesses that live on the blockchain. Yeah you might not agree with the impact it has on the platform, and I can definitely see your perspective, but nothing I'm doing is short sighted.
you take this too personally :p I just wanted to show you that it's not only the math that matters :p