You have all noticed it’s generally the same names at the top of the trending list clearing $100 SBD on a regular basis. Ever wondered how they do it?

I know this is a long post but it could not be expressed in less than 4,000 words, I tried. If you manage to read it to the end, cudos to you, you care and are passionate about Steemit.

This is not a “boo hoo” my post wasn’t successful and I poured my soul into it post. It’s not about authors making big bucks here and don’t deserve it. All authors deserve their rewards even if it’s a penny. I have always said that and you can go back through my comments to the beginning of time to prove it.

But there is some very fishy business going on and as it progresses it becomes more blatantly obvious. I have seen many great authors disappear due to the unfair bias of the guilds and voting which have the power to make or break a post and they know it. The authors I use are examples because they are apart of different curation guilds and leaders and I may get them mixed up but you know what I mean.

That’s why they started the guilds in the first place. Many of the best curators have alternate accounts using bots to bank rewards. The authors makes some money then sends it to the exchanges and then sends it back to another account to bot vote for them. Obscuring the trail.

This post is more than a rant. Here I prove to you how they do it using my own posts as an example and show you my methodology that directed me to these findings. Of course all data is open for interpretation and I expect to have to argue it in the comments section. I just hope this post isn’t flagged into oblivion which could happen. It’s a long detailed post, sorry if I ramble a bit this is the 4th draft and I have dwindled it down the best I could.

I have certainly cooled my jets since I started powering down a few days ago.

Flagging this post will be considered an admission of its facts.

As this is my Steemicide post I would like to say some nice things before I step off the ledge.

I want to thank the whales that voted and supported me. I have had some very successful posts and if not for you I would certainly have left long ago. I empathize with your wall. It’s not easy being a whale everything you do is scrutinized. When someone comes to back you up or support your decision more come to criticize you and complain your decision to vote or flag or ignore. We can’t even say thank you because then we will be called kiss asses and suck ups fishing for a vote and that’s been seen countless times.

I want to thank these whales in particular for their upvotes that without their votes I would have bailed long ago.

@berniesanders you would come in out of the blue when my post had just a few hours till it closed with barely a dollar in rewards and BooM you voted and made it worthwhile. I have had comments from friends who think that a post 16 hours old without rewards is pretty much dead, you proved that the governor can call moments before execution

@dantheman and @ned boy sometimes you guys have it rough. I think Steemit is an amazing platform and truly a revolutionary concept. Getting an upvote from you for us little guys is extra special. You have saved my day so many times and I never said thank you. Thank You. You have made a truly revolutionary platform and it’s still changing and adapting. All that plus what I said to @berniesanders.

Same goes for @blocktrades @abit @riverhead @silver @taoteh1221 @val and @abdullar . I don’t know if it was your bots or if you actually liked my articles but without you guys jumping in the final stretch to upvote my posts I surely would have been bitter much sooner.

@jesta too and also for creating www.steemstats.com which I used much more often than steemdb.com

@dimimp you are a character and your introduction post was awesome and legit.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@dimimp/please-help-addicted-to-steem-i-put-my-life-savings-into-steem-before-making-my-first-post-i-only-have-1-question

And all the dolphins and minnows who enjoyed my posts and or set their bots to me, I know many of you. Thanks be to you. When my posts made little they often got great comments and conversations. I can’t ramble on forever as I have some issues to talk about now but I see everyone who ever voted for my posts even those baffling 1% votes. Which I am not thankful for.

To non whales ,unless you have have 30,000SP don’t give 1% vote, you either liked it or you didn’t giving a 1% vote you know is damaging to the author more often than not if you are not yet a whale.

Which brings me to my point.

Don’t blame the whales for posts banking such big rewards. Yes, the posts make money because of the whale vote but that does not mean the whale consciously voted for it.

You see, everyone knows about the controversial bots. I am not opposed to bots, they are the reason posts are successful or not a lot of the time. It’s the voting trails and voting guilds that are the linchpin and sway the votes in favour of the authors they chose.

Bots are not the enemy, how they are programmed to function is.

And this is where I explain how they do it.

Firstly, I am not a bot expert and all of my bot knowledge is from reading posts and comments on Steemit since the summer of 2016. So I do have a general idea of how they work.

Curation Bots

Bots can be simple or complex. @steemvoter is kind of like a bot but does not function at a high level that some of the expert bots run at. So, this post is not about them and if you use steemvoter you will understand why. I have lots of free time and I love reading peoples post. If you ever got a vote from me it was 95% chance I read it.

This is not to say whales and guilds don’t like reading posts, they do as much as I but there is more to Steemit than reading posts and engaging with authors in the comment section. There are very good reasons to use bots to help with Curation rewards, they have been tried, tested and proven to increase your rewards no doubt. For some people the only reason their post made any significant rewards was due to bots, maybe, it’s tough to prove unless the ‘botter’ tells you.

There is money to be made by voting if you have tons of Steem Power. If you’ve been active here for a month or more you should be well aware of Curation rewards by now.

If you never put money into Steemit than you should never complain about your Curation rewards ok. You can work your way up slowly but 95% of us here are making less than a few dollars a week in Curation rewards. That is actual money not the rewards that the post tells you that you have made. Once you exchange on the markets and turn it into actually cash that you can spend it is considerably less. There are folks here who could lower their voting power to 1% and it would still give the author a few pennies, admirably.

Curation is for Steemians that have a significant amount of Steem Power where a properly placed vote could reap huge rewards. They deserve to use bots as a way to ensure their investment pays off not just once but forever. That is fair and that is business. Whether they got the Steem Power from mining, earning or buying it’s theirs and they lived their life in such a way that made it possible. Sorry you and I did not.

Without some sort of helper, like a bot, always working to make you money nobody in the future will invest money into Steemit and its value will plummet what little further it could go.

We need to attract whales with money that will buy Steem Tokens and thus make the platform worthwhile.

Steemit's Value comes from people wanting Steem Power, that’s it, that’s all. We should all hope some rich people with $100k to blow wants to, in the least have fun upvoting. They need to make money too.

Sadly they don’t, not enough anyways. So many dolphins and great authors are marketing to people without money but looking for some and leave soon after they realize they need to put a lot in. Like me and many of you. Don’t complain about bots, without them Steem would have died soon after it was born.

You can complain about how they function as I mentioned.

You see the whales have customized bots, most of them developed themselves. These bots are sophisticated and follow more than just their favourite tag or author.

Some bots, and I am not saying that all whales or for that matter any whales bots, function like this but this is an example of what bots are capable of doing. And in all probability some are certainly doing it.

And this is how the Guilds and Curation Trails took control of the rewards pool with the blessing of the developers and whales.

Let’ take a quick look at what a complex bot could and can do.

❶ They detect when a post is trending. When a post is getting many votes in a short or specific period of time.

❷They can detect when a post is making good rewards with either a lot of votes or a few votes.

❸ They can follow the votes of other curators rather than vote for specific authors or posts.

❹ They cannot detect quality, as that is too subjective but could pick up on tags and keywords or phrases though I doubt they do that, the possibility is still there.

❺ Follow or ignore posts that are resteemed.

❻ How much weight or power they give per vote based on a series of other settings.

Ultimately, anything you would want it to do it could be programmed to do. Down to the very detail of how much SP the author has (only vote on authors with X amount of SP + many settings). Possible even if they are not set to do it. But we should all assume if it is possible it is probably happening, that is a theme of many Steemit trending tags.

We all came here to make money. Don’t kid yourself or me that you are here to “spread the word” or make friends. We absolutely can make friends here, I have made some of my best online friends here, we can spread the word, to the few thousands that log in and may have the chance to see your headline and then click your post. But to be honest there are better places to do that, we are here to have that and make money. Tell me I’m wrong; you better prove it.

The most important thing a bot can do is follow the vote of someone that leads a guild or Curation Trail because that's where the real money is for high SP holders that don’t write posts. This is the best way to ensure your votes are making the most rewards. I can give you two examples of the “higher ups” asking for people to follow their votes.

I am only using these two Steemians as an example and in No Way am I blaming them personally for the failed trail votes on my posts. There are many guilds and Curator Trails, I am just most familiar with these ones. They are examples! Though many curators have more than one account, several in fact so chasing the voting trail can be very difficult to know who actually started it.

https://steemit.com/curation/@anyx/follow-me-as-a-curator
(got her a couple flags not sure why)

@anyx a top dev and whale. He wrote a post talking about his bots and how clever they are and following his trail will earn great rewards. Essentially the post he picks should create an upvote spike from those following his trail.

@anyx controls @cheetah bot and @steemcleaners. He is by far one of the most clever devs on Steemit not just technically but socially. Last summer he used his might to destroy an author because he didn’t like his posts. It may have been the first true example of deliberate flagging into annihilation. It caused a huge stir in the community as he bragged on other social networks that she could do it to pretty much anyone. So not many people argue with her and those who do soon find their rewards dwindle down.

(after talking with @anyx I admit I am way off on this fact and he has not had anything to do with flagging anyone into obliteration. you can go down the comments and see. Sorry for the misrepresentation of character I failed to check those facts and I feel like crap.

Next is

@stellabelle. I saw her long ago and I’m surprised she reached out to me my last comment. I cannot help her make more money with my posts, when her trail is already dedicated to other authors. I like her as an author and person and by no means is the Trail picking her up often but she is well connected and following her vote could get you more in rewards.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@stellabelle/why-i-use-a-personal-pimp-bot-to-curate-in-steemit

Anyways she is more of an example of people using bots and wanting the trail to follow them. I really didn't look to deep into her voting habits so I can’t say if she is leading a trail to the same old guys on the top of the trending page. I use her as an example of bots and vote trail leading.

She explains very clearly in this post the type of voter she is and why she switched to using a bot.

Really, I respect you and your position here. But us minnows and potential investors are being misled and the upper echelons of Steemit are missing these points that people with money are not.
People who could drop $5k just for shits and giggles. I am not saying that they read her post and feel this way but they obviously feel what I and many others do without bothering to look to deep and express it in a now 4,000 word post.

The guilds know how to control the whale bots and direct them to the posts of their choosing by having just enough power and support to make a particular post trend and earn rewards. This is a good thing for both the author and the curator.

Not to mention the gossip of buying votes. Yes, I have heard you can buy votes, whales wouldn’t sell their vote, to buy it would be unprofitable I presume not enough money per vote to degrade the platform as much as it has now. However, a guild could really help you out.

This is why guilds leading the bots to the same authors every day, every post they write are bad for the diversity of the platform.

This is why smart wealthy investors will not drop more than couple hundred dollars instead of a few grand or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You might be surprised at what people with lots money spend it on. How blowing $50k US on Steemit would be just a drop in the bucket considering the day before they bought their 12th car while on vacation because they hate rental companies.

A billionaire with a grudge could essentially buy all the Steem Power on the market and pretty much take over the votes. It would cost less than their summer home. And yes that would be very good for people selling Steemit to make money but my point about the power flux still stands.

Sure, some have put in lots of money in the past but not in a long time and they sure didn’t tell their friends what wonderful place this is to make easy money.

So here, after much rambling and many second guesses I will show you how I came to these conclusions. Using two of my posts that I feel should have done better if the Guilds and Trails “didn’t” follow my post.

Getting picked up by a Curation trail has isn’t profitable for me. I have some posts long ago get picked up but the post had already banked good rewards. BUT if their trail picks me up early they can “throttle down” my success to ensure I don’t get too much rewards.

Let me show you how I figured it out.

@virtualgrowth has set his bot to vote on my post the moments its posted at 2% voting power. The first vote I get. What does that signal to all the bots that follow that vote? Do others in turn give a low powered vote? They claim to have a mission of helping authors earn more rewards but I am not feeling it.

First I looked at the success of a post at the same time picked up by a trail and compared it to other posts that almost daily make great rewards. I wanted to see who my competition was.

Don’t forget Steemit is a competition for rewards. The pie is only so big each day and who gets a slice of pie and how big it is will always be a battle. More authors do not equal more rewards it means the same rewards divided among the current and new authors. It’s very competitive and if you are not making rewards like the top guys this might be a surprise to you.

Let me explain.

I wrote a couple posts the past week or so that got picked up by the trails but failed miserably anyways. They lost out to posts that were well written by all means and deserved to make rewards. I can't help but notice they are all good friends with the guild leaders. This is not an attack on the subjective quality of their work. It is about them always, everyday, making huge rewards for writing content that is comparable in quality at least to dozens of other authors who don’t make shit for their hard work, cat photos, or delicious foods, anything really.

Example Number One

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@solarguy/how-i-cashed-out-steem-for-the-first-time-and-nearly-doubled-it-in-17-days-with-proof

Now I am willing to accept that this post made little, had it made less I would have been able to accept that too. BUT I figured out why it failed. I will tell you why I know it is good post and that is not just my opinion. I have written many posts that failed and looked at them and said to myself “I can see why that didn’t get a whale vote” but this post deserved a whale vote. Read it and tell me it was not a good post that deserved more than what it was competing against. Remember I said it’s a completion to get rewards so though quality is subjective let’s look at what got big rewards so this post would get little.

This is why I am hurt and lost faith in Steemit as a reputable place to invest money.

Am I really suppose to believe they are not influential?

Why was my post only worth 2% power when you hadn’t even read it? Not enough time passed, it was instant.

This post in particular would have been great marketing for Steemit. The little guy rising up to cash out. Damn that would have been good marketing. I got votes from people that have never ever voted for me. Influential people and those with Steem power but they too many gave me low power votes.

These guys gave me good votes @dollarvigilant @charlieshrem @barrycooper to name a few that never looked at me before.

So many low power votes, so many votes without making significant rewards tell the bots to fuck off. The guilds know this because they know how bots work. They can use that to their advantage. They are probably doing it on purpose.

At roughly the same time as my post was up for voting these posts were at the top of the trending list. I gave it a day before and a day after because they kind of cross over even if they were not posted the at the exact same time. And the more votes, whale votes, the longer the post will run.
My competing posts at the same time give a day in before or after.
Please understand I do enjoy these authors posts and have read many when I stumble upon ones that catch my eye.

I like you guys, great writers, really but something fishy is going on when my posts get picked up the trails and make almost nothing compared to you guys getting picked up by a trail and clearing $100 regularly.

https://steemit.com/life/@the-alien/a-different-look-on-minimalism

https://steemit.com/movie-review/@hanshotfirst/flashback-reviews-star-wars-side-projects-part-i-caravan-of-courage

https://steemit.com/film/@jrcornel/movie-review-the-magnificent-seven-2016

Just an example of the leaders of project Curie the guild that claims the following:

Do my posts really deserve less than a movie review? When people who never voted for me before vote. What do your clever bots detect? When my FB gets record comments and likes, I even got a retweet from a random dude, not from Steemland ever!

I think it’s important you know who is in control of some of the most powerful guilds and voting trails that have the founders and developers blessings. Some of these same people are almost always on the top of the trending lists daily. Not all but many without a doubt you will recognize their names.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@donkeypong/announcing-steem-guild-a-second-stage-project-to-continue-supporting-good-authors-after-project-curie

How many of those names are on the trending list right now. Go click “trending” and see. You don’t have to, you know it!

They are good writers, really. And I know that their posts are good for Steemit. Sometimes other posts are also good for Steemit and get lots of attention but low rewards because the trails have already dedicated their voting power to their favourites.

Is it not unusual that the leaders of Project Curie are at the top so often? The people who said they are here to help the other authors do better are actually hurting you, you hurting us. They will have arguments I am willing to debate with them. I am not just saying these things, I am going to show you why I say these things.

To be honest they have helped many but not as much as is possible.

I used www.steemstats.com to look deeper and when needed I checked www.steemdb.com for more info.

Now the people with Steem Power who upvoted this article gave me very low powered votes. Which is ok and insane because the only reason the other posts did so well is because those post got more Steem Powered votes. My post could have made them just as much if the trail wasn't working against me.

This post got me some of the best responses ever both on and off Steemit platform. My personal Facebook was quite popular compared to other things I put there. I even got a rewtweet.

I know it’s not a big number but I usually get less than 10 likes and just a couple comments when I post my Steemit articles on my FB wall.

I did not get a retweet from Steemland as they have their fav’s and I have never been on that list even after bringing it up in comment sections. They don’t like my posts. You see, when they retweet something it tells people who is trending and where to vote, they could not have votes going to me because it would take a slice of the pie from the authors at the top that network with them. It has happened to many of you as well.

Not sure why they wouldn’t retweet me when they seem to retweeted posts thousands of times since they stared. Some random guy I didn’t even know retweeted which I never get retweets for my Steemit Tweets.

My next post was similar but different voters.
Don’t forget that the top people often admit they have different accounts for curating.

https://steemit.com/photography/@solarguy/the-truth-about-tree-planting-in-ontario-s-northern-wilderness-25-unique-photos

Now I understand Robin Hood Whale is different than most Guilds. I just find it baffling that trails meant to encourage rewards are not able to succeed. Why wouldn’t the whales follow RHW project? Is their trail not valuable? Are they out of your friends circle? I don’t know but I wonder.

For similar reasons this post also failed. When I look at the competition I can’t help but feel like I was cheated by the curators leading the bots. I would have made more money from my parked website making a few pennies from typo google searches.

I learned not to put too much effort and love into a post, the rewards go to the few people they’re meant for, which is not me and many of you who managed to read this far into my post.

You can argue I don’t know enough about bots to say what I said but I will reply I know what all the people who didn’t invest in Steemit know. Right or Wrong I have given some compelling things to think about. If I feel this way the law of averages means many others do too.

It’s really such a deep confusing topic. There is more to it then I just wrote but it was too much to write it all on a post that has a good chance of not even being viewed.

Whether my findings are right or completely off it still looks that way doesn't it?

EDITED
Can you really be angry at a whale that flags a post they feel earns to much now that you have this perspective?