Steemit Paid Voting Bots Guide Part 2: Return on Investment (ROI) with actual numbers , not speculation: @RandoWhale, @Booster, WhaleShares

This is Part 2 of a three part series where I talk about how to use the bots. Links to the other parts:

• Part 1: How To Use @RandoWhale, @Booster, WhaleShares
• Part 3: Advanced ROI Theory on @RandoWhale, @Booster, WhaleShares

I have read a few guides from authors on these bots, but they don't seem to talk about specific numbers...it's mostly speculation on what they think the earnings are. Without knowing the earnings, you are just gambling. This post will focus on the numbers, profitability, and strategy for using these bots.

If you want to know how to use the bots, see Part 1 of the Guide.

RandoWhale

• Cost: 2 SBD
• Wait time between sending payment and receiving vote: About 1 minute
• Methodology: You send 2 SBD, and this bot almost instantly votes for your specified link with a randomly selected value from 1% to 5% voting power, for an average of 3% voting power.
• Limitations: Can only get a max of 5% voting power, can only get 1 upvote per link, if you send an amount that is different from exactly 2 SBD you will lose your money. Also, if you accidentally send money to @RandomWhale (correct is @RandoWhale), you will lose your money and not get an upvote.

Booster

• Cost: However little or however much you want
• Wait time between sending payment and receiving upvote: Could be anywhere from 1 minute to 2.4 hours
• Methodology: There is an open period of "bidding" where anyone can send SBDs to @booster with a specified link. Each open period is 2.4 hours, at the end of that you get a vote where the voting power is based on how much you contributed compared to everyone else.
  • For example, if 3 people submit 1 SBD each, all 3 get the same amount of voting power as a result. If, however, person A submits 2 SBD, while the other 2 people submit 1 SBD each, then person A will get twice the voting power compared to what the other 2 people would each get.
• Limitations: Can only get 1 upvote per link.

WhaleShares

• Cost: Minimum of 1 whaleshare, max of 100 whaleshare
  • 1 whaleshare costs between 40 cents and $1 USD each.
    • 1 whaleshare costs between 2 to 5 BTS (Bitshares) today. A Bitshare has been trading around 30 to 32 cents the past week NEVERMIND...looks like it tanked down to 20 cents over night!
• Wait time between sending payment and receiving upvote: Could be anywhere from 1 minute to 4 minutes. It's fast, but not quite as fast as randowhale, because you have to wait for the whaleshare payment confirmations.
• Limitations: Can only get 1 upvote per link (although sometimes I'm actually get 2 votes), have to make sure you send payment to whaleshares (and not whaleshare), have to make sure you buy whaleshare (not whaleshares). Hope you're not confused yet...because both accounts and both types of shares exist.

Which bot is better?

For ease of use, @randowhale and @booster win. For getting a huge dollar value upvote like a boss, whaleshares and @booster win. For speed in getting an upvote, @randowhale and whaleshares win. It's a 3 way tie...unless you have a preference over ease of use, speed, or size of upvote. To me, speed is the most important so I don't like @booster as much.

Timing of Upvote

To figure out how much money a bot will generate for us, we need to talk about a really important factor, timing! How much curators get vs authors get would take up a whole post to discuss, so I will just cover the high level basics here. The author will get 75% of what a post generates at a minimum, the curators (upvoters) will get 25% at most. 30 minutes after the post was created, 100% of money generated by upvotes will go to curators. Before 30 minutes it's on a sliding scale. Let's look at some examples of who gets money generated from an upvote at various minutes after the author posts the blog:

• At the 1 minute mark: Author gets about 99%, upvote pool get 1%
• At the 15 minute mark: Author gets about 87.5%, upvote pool gets 12.5%
• At the 29 minute mark: Author gets about 76%, upvote pool gets 26%
• At the 30 minute mark and later: Author gets 75%, upvote pool gets 25%

At the end of 7 days, the upvote pool is split up between all upvoters based on your weight. Weight is determined by your voting power, voting capacity, how many people upvoted before/after you, how many minutes after original post you voted. To maximize curation rewards, you want to be the first upvoter and you want to upvote at the 30 minute mark...which almost never works out.

Understanding how curators vs the author gets paid is very important when deciding which bots to use and when to use them.

Show me data!

This chart shows how much you (the author) gets from these bots X minutes after you post the blog. The boxes in black represent unlikely situations. You would have to time booster auction end time with your post time perfectly and get lucky to get an upvote at the 15 minute mark or sooner. With Whaleshares, you are waiting on the transaction to go through, so a 1 minute upvote is highly unlikely.

But wait, it's not that simple! Unless you have been living under the rock, you may have noticed that your post values decline as days go by. Let's assume you lose 20% to 30% of the total value by the time day 7 comes around. How do the earnings look now?

30% payout decline

25% payout decline

20% payout decline

If you believe the payout decline is only 20%, then you can maximize direct monetary return by using bots in the first 5 minutes. If you believe the payout decline is 30% or more, the best direct monetary return is to use the bots at the 6.5 day mark.

Let's get to the business already!

At 70% author rewards, the bots don't actually give you a direct monetary return. Let's assume I spend 2 SBD on each of the 3 bots, what do I get at the 6 day mark, which I'm saying is the time of best monetary return? Today, 2 SBD is worth about $2.20

• $2.20 USD (about 2 SBD) @Randowhale investment at the 3% average voting power: 70% x $3.79 = $2.65
• $2.20 USD (about 2 SBD) @Booster investment: 70% x $2.37 = $1.78
• $2.20 USD (about 2 Whaleshares): 70% x $1.65 = $1.16

I have used the bots to upvote 3 separate comments below, so you can see their initial value and value as it fades over time. My perception was that you lose money on average from all 3 bots. Randowhale made money...I didn't believe it, so I ran it on two different comments on this post. Rando was profitable on both...I still feel like I have lost money in the past, but I can't argue with today's numbers. 2 of the 3 bots lost money, only randowhale made money.

Other things that will vary results is how much power each bot has and how much 1 SBD, whaleshare, and bitshare is worth at the time you use the bots. The bots may change their voting algorithm from time to time as well. Either way, you will lose money unless something major changes. The bots exist to make their creators money...they are a business so it's safe to assume you will lose money on average.

But, wait...there may be another benefit to using the bots!

If you found this post helpful, please upvote and then move on to Part 3 of the guide. Part 3 will talk about will show you the benefit and why I use the bots.