It's really hard to know if they are profiting. Common running assumption is 25% goes to curation, but this just isn't the case most of the time. Many of the bots allow voting under 30 minutes so they can really cut down on the amount paid in curation. Know when I was using bots I'd notice last second bids on posts that just were written. These jackasses would wait unit there was 90 seconds left on a large bot that still had some room before going negative. Then submit their post, then pay for their very large bid turning all the bids negative IF you didn't have any large upvotes early. But to those guys it's a cash cow as they just removed curation almost completely from their post and all future bid bots will have most of the curation going to the owner.
Hope that makes sense...it's late.
But put in a couple of the worst offenders account names into steemworld and look at the post payouts. You can see what percentage went to curation.
Just an example of your last post that paid out:
Created 2018-04-03, 04:59 ( 7 days, 20 hours ago )
Author Payout $ 59.966
Curator Payout $ 22.897 ( 27.63 % )
Transfer Amount
Link abh12345/utopian-io-contribution-approved-rejected-analysis-23rd-29th-march-2018
vs the second top trending person right now (first person hasn't posted in 500+ days, yet got a vote from Mr TA's supporter...interesting) most recent payout:
Created 2018-03-11, 07:24 ( 30 days, 18 hours ago )
Author Payout $ 37.790
Curator Payout $ 3.731 ( 8.99 % )
Transfer Amount -
Link alishannoor/some-click-from-wedding-party-of-a-cousin
And that post didn't have nearly as much paid support as his most recent one. But at under 9% in curation he can afford for even a -10% cap and still come out ahead.
Not sure how you ended up over 25%, but I know exactly how he got under 9%.
The calcs are out on mine because of the benefactor payout to utopian, but I understand where you are heading.
If the bidding round is full or over-subscribed, then profit isn't happening for the bidders - and the rounds are generally full.
Profit is happening if you can remove the curation buy purchasing near 0 minute upvotes. I've seen as low as 3% curation paid and I don't look often so bet others have gotten this lower.
True. The submitting of posts in light with a bidding round to land the vote as soon after post creation has been happening for months.
A few bots wont allow it as they are losing curation too.
Unless you are Pizza guy and your rewards get taken away in a matter of a couple hours for all pending posts...lol. That was amazing.
ha!
Awesome, I was notified of him yesterday and contributed a little DV - didn't check up later, thanks to @anthonyadavisii for bringing that one to light.
I only checked as I needed to let my voting power increase before dropping my flags and went there and it was all complete...lol
I hadn't thought about that. That is very interesting indeed.