I can relate to both ways.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was where you are now.
But now I’m struggling...
You see, experiments have shown that the fastest way to grow your account is by using the bots wisely. I’m not talking about throwing hundreds at a crappy post. My content is not of that good quality that I believe it’s worth getting it to trending.

Since I started here on SteemIt, I have been all about helping others to climb the ladder. But my account is only small; the help I can give them is almost neglectable.

Earlier this week I read some posts and had some conversations that made me think: growing my account as fast as possible will allow me to help more people in a better way.

You’ve got to stay true to yourself and shouldn’t exploit the system, but I trust myself enough to not do that. I will never use the bidbots if I don’t think my article is good enough (still talking about throwing just a little SBD to them, not hundreds)

This place needs a middle class, urgently. There are a couple of exceptions, but for now it’s small minnows helping plankton and the other way around. We need more bigger accounts that are willing to support the little guys if we want SteemIt to survive.

I’m not saying I’ve made up my mind yet about which direction to go from here, but the facts are that organic growth takes time... too much time.
I considered self-voting and bidbot use as things you shouldn’t do.
But if those things give me the opportunity to grow my account faster, so I can make a bigger difference in more people’s SteemIt experience... are they the wrong way to go??

Like I said, I’m still struggling with all this. It’s a fine line between using available resources to do the good thing and abuse.

You might be interested in one of the related posts and comments on it that made me think about all this.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@beeyou/what-is-the-path-to-success-on-steemit-perspective-of-a-redfish

(You’ll find some results of the experiments there that will show you how organic growth is the slower way)