Great proactive advice. fitfun. It is much appreciated. Yes the bidbotting is a little deceptive. I gave it a go today to see what would happen. I spent 1 SBD and got back a vote just under that. The thing is if someone bids lets say 40 SBD and get back 30 ... it looks as though they made 30 on the post. Unless they follow up by looking at the wallet, they don't know they actually went into the hole.
I may use bitbots again, but I have to say I'd prefer steemit without them ... I post regularly but not too frequently and am super supportive ... without bots that kind of behaviour would be more valued. As it is ... there seems to be two economies going on ... one for minnows and dolphins and whales who don't bit-bot and one for whales with bid-bots. For a whale, it is much more profitable to run a bot than to roam around and curate the old fashion way and certainly less labour intensive. It keeps steemit very top heavy. But lump it or like it, I guess ... it is the way it is for now.
The formula I use for profit on bots is -
By this method, a $1 bid needs to return a vote of $2.70 to be profitable in sbd. If you count the increase to sp, you do not do the division.
I would say that most people who have any level of success here do not roam around voting for anyone. Everyone is using auto-services to vote. The vast majority of my post voting is done by @steemdunk. If I want to support you - I will add you there and vote for you each time you post. Therefore I am supporting you but I will rarely even see your post. My manual upvoting mostly goes to comments.
I visit the people I upvote like that a few times a month to check on them and their content. If I was a whale - with a huge vote - voting many people per day automatically, I could not even do that. I have people that vote all my posts but I only see them come to comment once in awhile.
Most whales - and most people here - are not running bots. Instead they delegate to the few people who do run bots and get paid regularly. It is easier for big people to delegate and have low value for their own vote - otherwise they get thousands of comments of people begging them for votes.
Bots one way or another do seem run contrary to the stated ethos of the platform. It might work for the wealth of those at the top, but I wonder if it is good for the health of the platform over all. I remain with the sentiment that greater rewards should be filtered to those who are using the platform for social media and blogging purposes. If more people get wind of the bot situation, they may choose to not join or soon be run off and fewer will be willing to invest in SP. Given the issues FB is facing, now might be the time to focus on the overall health of the platform. That which becomes too top heavy, topples over.
I do appreciate the conversation. Wishing you a very good night:)