Hello Steemians,
Today I want to talk about Upvote bots and should you be using them?

Introduction

What are Upvote bots? These are bots that upvote your post in exchange of some steem or SBD. The bots have their market where they provide these services and you can place a bid for upvoting your post. They can help you a lot for your post to gain some eyeballs and momentum, if used properly. There is a place called steembottracker.com/ where all the compliant and trustworthy bots are available.

In this post I'll be sharing my thought on the best time frame to use the bots and tips for getting a better ROI against your bid.

Keep these things in mind before even considering to opt for upvote bot.

• Let me stop you right there, if your are thinking this is some quick scheme which will get you success in steemit without doing hard work, you are wrong my friend.

• If you are posting some inferior content or some lame jokes and trying to use the bot to get upvotes. Then it can do more harm than good. Trust me, people can downvote your post if they see that you are miss using this service and your post is not worth looking into.

• You should consider upvote bot as an investment for you post to gain some attention it needs, Also when you send SBD or steem to these bot and when they upvote you, you will get the money in 50% in SBD and 50% Steem power. And it will take 13 weeks to withdraw that entire Steem Power. So keep this in mind.

Best time frame to use upvote bot on your post.

Now this part is important, since you know that up to 25% of post curation reward goes to curators depending upon the time it gets upvoted. You can refer the curation reward breakdown here if you are not familiar with it.

So lets consider the below timeline:

• Within first 15 mins of posting

This is the best time frame to get upvoted by bot, coz the 90% of the curator reward will go to author. So just before posting you should be ready to bid and keep in mind the next upvote time for that particular bot you want to use while posting.

• between 15 to 27 mins

At this time the 50% of the curation reward from upvotes goes to curator.

• After 27 mins

At this time almost 25% of the upvote value will goes to curator i.e. upvote bot

• After 3.5 days

You should never be using any upvote bot service to get upvote on a post which is 3.5 days old, else Grumpy Cat will hunt you down and flag your post.

Tips for picking upvote bot

• Don't bid too early and too late for a bot. The number of people bidding for particular bot derives the ROI. If you're bidding too early by looking at the bot ROI and later if many people bid for the same bot the ROI will get down or might go in negative. And if you bid too late there is a chance that the bot already has too many bidders and your bid will be consider for next round which will take 2.5 hrs to vote.

Best time to decide is between 10 to 5 mins before the vote time for the bot you want to bid.

• Just like in investment we look at the past performance similarly you can look how the bot performed in its pervious round. See the screenshot.

• Also keep an eye on max suggested bid. You want to make sure that it is more than the amount you wanted to bid.

Suppose if you wanted to bid for 5 SBD and max suggested bid is also 5, don't do it, look for another bot which have more max bid. The reason is you are not the only one bidding for that bot, chances are your bid may go for the next round.

• For Beginners it is suggested to use smaller bids like 1 SBD or 0.1 SBD, etc. Make sure it is equal to or more than the bot minimum acceptable bid.

• Also dont bit for any bot that have max post age more than 3.5 days. Also always use bot service from steembottracker.com/ so you don't get scammed.

Is it Profitable?

Let me put this way, If you want to make a profit out of it WITHOUT good content, then it may be profitable in short term but for long run you need good content as well. And if you are content is good for which you have put time and effort to create it then it will be highly profitable to use.

Conclusion

Upvote are really good if it used with good content and should be used in a way to promote your content so that more people can see it and if the content is good you will get appreciated. Try to time your bid so you can get some part of curation reward which will also increase the chance of better ROI on the bid. If you are a beginner, then I would tell you to start with smaller bids so you wont lose much money and you can try different thing as well, you never know you could end up finding better ways of using upvote bots.

Please let me know your question, thoughts or any suggestion or any tips for me.
Also let me know is there anything you want me to cover in regards to Upvote bot
I appreciate your time to stop by my post. Thank you so much.

Your fellow steemian
Prashant Jaiswal aka @guggis