I used to use the bots too when I first started out, coz I didn't know better. One more thing I would add is, only after you stop using these bot, you get an idea of where you truly are at with you steemit blog....it gives you the push to spend more time on improving the quality of you posts and comments to engage more people, and eventually getting those non-bot REAL upvotes.

Sure, you might "buy" a $5 upvote from a bot, but you don't know if you truly deserved it, and thus the push to do better isn't there for you!! Trust me, when you get 15 genuine upvotes and make like $1-2, it feels much better, and if that's where you want your posts to be at for the rest of your steemit career, so be it. And if you wanna improve that, well there's your push to improve!! Go out there, find great posts, comment, engage, build your follower base and all that good stuff!!