Hello again, @midlet.

I'm a digital artist. Have a look at my blog someday. I haven't used promotion bots. I've been a member here since September 2016. In that time I've been able to build up a nice pile of SP(20000+), all earned. There could be a bit more, but I took some out and reinvested elsewhere.

Have a look at my followers. 2665 as of this writing. I don't do anything other than post and leave a few comments laying around on other blogs. These followers just show up, slowly. Have a look at the rewards beside my posts. I didn't pay for that. Roughly 25% of that goes to curators, the rest is mine. It's been a bit slow lately, but I'll get 100-200 views per post and more when things are going well. I don't buy those views. All of what you see, I worked for, and it took a long time.

Let's look at @abrockman's blog now. He has been going all out using bots for a month now. Anyone who's anyone saw his posts. He nearly has as many followers as me. 2286 as of this writing. All of that money spent purchasing "exposure" helped him get a lot of followers. He didn't use bots for this post, so far. Majority of his previous posts, he did use bots. Lot's of money beside those posts. Look at this post. As of this writing, $3.58. As of this writing, 58 views, 37 votes. If I removed my vote with 20000 SP behind it, his payout would drop to about 70 cents. I put majority of that money there, as of this writing, with one vote.

That's what happens to nearly everyone who buys the votes. You can buy your friends but they're not necessarily going to have your back. A high number of followers doesn't pay people here. Votes that we don't pay for, pay us.

When new members see hundreds of dollars beside a post on the trending page, they think the post is there because it is popular. They don't know there's a chance the slot was purchased by someone using bots. They think the blogger is successful, they want to know them, they want to follow with the hopes of getting a follow back, but their votes are worth pennies, if that. I just picked ten random followers from brockman's list. Every single one of them was broke, no money in those wallets, no SP. They can't support an artist who wants to make money. You'd need over 100 of their votes to make a dollar.

Another problem we have is how the reward pool works. Everyone shares that. Our votes push and pull it around. If I were to purchase $300 worth of that reward pool, that's how much I'm taking away from everyone else without their consent. That's the part I personally have a huge issue with. Have you ever noticed your payouts drop in value? That's one of two things. The value of the tokens dropping, or the reward pool being pulled away from you. If I vote for someone, I move about $3 dollars of that reward pool to the post I feel deserves it. When others vote for me, they too move the reward pool my way. I don't decide how much I earn, the people do. I'm comfortable with that, I believe it's fair. I personally feel it would be incredibly selfish of me to decide MY post is better than all the others and deserves a huge chunk of the reward pool beside it. That's just my opinion.

Steemit is a new game. The old ways don't necessarily work here. My advice to you, after looking at your blog is this: People don't want to follow ART. There are literally millions of images to look at on this platform. They want to follow the ARTIST. I add a lot of my personality into my posts, I entertain people, plus they look at my art.

You said:

I think a lot of the artists here are doing what I'm doing ie posting mostly older work and something new every now and then

Incorrect. I work hard and show something new in nearly every post. I recently put all of my work from the previous two months of posting into one post. Just to focus only on the art. If I would have been thinking, maybe, that post should have been the post I actually promoted up to the trending page. I can agree, there is a time and a place for promotions. One epic post every couple of months or even once a month if you have a lot to show wouldn't be a bad idea at all. At least that way I'm being fair and I'm not cutting in line, putting all of the artists under me while slowly putting them out of business... which is what people are doing when they buy the votes.

P.S. Your recent post has $25 dollars beside it. You paid for some of that. Does the $25 dollars make the post stand out above the other posts with $25 next to them? .... you guys are just shooting yourself in the foot. Pardon my honesty.