While I think @sbi is a good initiative and its a great way to reward users in contest and such, I am not 100 % sure the 1 Steem investment is a good one monetary wise for current returns we get. Without looking ... I must have 6-7 shares or more and the upvote I get is valued at $0.01 . That is a one cent upvote in return for 7 Steem.
I know upvoting the @sbi content helps with getting higher votes on shares but that is a faulty in the program in my eyes. Once paid to get in, that should be that. I admit I don't know the full mechanics on how it works but on face vaule it looks like to me the more shares given out the less your own share is worth. So when we give out shares we are essentially devaluing our own.
While at current time the upvote value we get in accordance to what we pay doesn't look appealing to me there are other aspects of the initiative that I like. Steem is low at the moment so a share is inexpensive so thats a plus at the moment.
$0.01 for 7 Steem is not bad at all. So you know what value you get if you use 7 Steem of your own to upvote yourself 10 times a day?
But that $0.01 is mainly depending on how often you get it. 10 times a day would be brilliant. 1 time per week the total opposite.
@sbi is basically a bot so if I use 7 steem on bots for 10 comments that would be 0.70 for each bot. I could gain 80 % ROI or more if I was careful with what bots I used and where I placed those votes.
Note, I updated previous comment.
I believe the same. 60%-80% ROI could be possible with paid bots. However those are different from SBI. As SBI provides a life long of upvotes.
The majority on here don't post 10 times a day. I would say most don't even post once a day. @sbi may have a different way of use than traditional bots on here but its still a bot. 80 % roi on bots is no problem to achieve with votes of low value.
There are ones that guarantee 1.8 / 2.5 / 3 x your return. Those bots are lower powered ones but 10 x .70 sbd votes would be possible using their services along side with some more modest voting bots. Minus the 25 % curation rewards and returns can easily be at an ROI of 80 % or more.
So the question becomes is the 1 cent upvote ( which decreasing as more shares are given out ) more valuable then *doubling your investment in a day.
And do you want to spend a few minutes or even hours per day to earn only a very limited amount of Steem/SBD?
I wonder if it would be possible to upscale earning from bid bots?
For example by spending 100 SBD in a week and receive a net upvote value of 140 SBD?
Assuming that all Steem one receives is recalculate into SBD to make it possible to calculate the return.
Since I am trying to grow my account organically I already spend minutes / hours a day for limited growth just like the majority of others that are apart of this platform.
I am almost certain one could turn 100 SBD into 140 SBD in a week. In fact if we factor in further weeks we can turn it into more then 140 SBD. We can do this by using the SBD we get back after the seven day payout and reinvest again into bots and receive another 40 % net profit on those funds. Rinse and repeat until you have next to no SBD left and its all been turned into Steem / Steem Power.
I have already decided to never directly power up. If I want to power up I will use bots to do so as it gives a better ROI on the amount of SP I will receive. The downside is it will take weeks to get that ROI and price fluctuations can get in the way. So its a gamble.
You seem pretty well informed about how things work. Many people forget about the risk of price decreases. And not to mention downvotes.
Did you think about powering down your SP? To have a bigger amount available for buying upvotes?
It might increase your growth, but if course it is a small risk.
And did you calculate how big the price decrease of Steem should be before a 40% profit turns into loss?