How Did Our Bid Bot Experiment Go?
😎 Bid Bots 2 😎
We spent a bunch of money but we didn’t make much
Most people were ok with it
Some people thought that we were dicks
We met a lot more crypto-babes
Now their friends are joining Steemit
That’s a good enough reason to use bots
The bots
Crypto-babes love bots
The SteemBirds ever hit the trending page
Good content was not enough
To get your post to the fucking top
To the top
Like it or not
Cause your ass might get down voted
You could even lose some cash
Better make sure you’re not posting trash
Even before the bid bots came
Whales have always had control
Right now they’re controlling it with bots
With bots
Maybe we should give it a shot
The SteemBirds ever hit the trending page
Good content is not enough
To get your post to the fucking top
Mother fuck'n top
Like it or not
Bid Bot Experiment Results (just an FYI)
Last week we promoted our post to the trending page using bid bots. It cost us 280 STEEM and the post paid out a total value of 277.5 STEEM. So we lost 2.5 STEEM on the post. This was largely due to the market correction, which also meant we got paid more STEEM and less SBDs. Had the price of STEEM and SBDs stayed constant, we probably would have made a small profit. As it stands, it was an informative experiment and a cost-effective promotion strategy.
Profit/Loss:
Promotion Cost: 280 STEEM
Payout Value: 277.5 STEEM
Total Loss: 2.5 STEEM
Promotion Results:
New Followers: 125 (some of which were bots lol)
Comments: 252
Reputation: @steembirds moved from a 60.9 to a 62.0
Youtube Views: 315
Obviously, the songs are epic! LOL Always enjoy them.
But this was a fantastic experiment and numbers to back up exactly why bid bots can be a very effective promotion strategy. Goes to show that great content like yours can trend and attract a new audience.
Well done!!!
Thanks @jongolson! Exactly, it's nice to know that now everyone has the option of being on the trending page if they're willing to put some money behind their content. 😎
Absolutely. I think when people understand you basically spent 2.5 STEEM for all those new followers , increased reputation and oodles of new exposure...It's pretty much the best value out there for advertising and promotion.
Did it help that the content was hilarious and memorable, absolutely. But that's not the platform's (Steemit) responsibility to 'create' the content...That's ours as creators. The cream will rise and the bots helped it shine!
I love this case study guys. :)
very good guys
Hi! Friends
I am Jitendra Gautam
If you want to earn huge money from steemit.
If you not able to write a unique catchy content then I have an offer for you I will write 10 posts for you, in return you have to give 1 steam dollar
and write all the posts in 5 hours. If you want to check my posts then @jkgautam and If you want that I will write posts for you then contact me at [email protected]
I basically did the same experiment and came o more or less the same conclusion, although my take was closer to -30 percent. When has music promotion ever been free?Not for my tenure that’s for sure. Today’s experiment however...much better. :) See y’all on the trending page! 😉
how much steem is spent on the promotion of a post?
@embroiderynews Follow me and upvote. I will do the same and i will upvote for you on your posts
we want soning 😕
........
Hi! Friends
I am Jitendra Gautam
If you want to earn huge money from steemit.
If you not able to write a unique catchy content then I have an offer for you I will write 10 posts for you, in return you have to give 1 steam dollar
and write all the posts in 5 hours. If you want to check my posts then @jkgautam and If you want that I will write posts for you then contact me at [email protected]
Hi! Friends
I am Jitendra Gautam
If you want to earn huge money from steemit.
If you not able to write a unique catchy content then I have an offer for you I will write 10 posts for you, in return you have to give 1 steam dollar
and write all the posts in 5 hours. If you want to check my posts then @jkgautam and If you want that I will write posts for you then contact me at [email protected]
Yeah the songs are really epic as hell:))
obviuosly its worthlesss due to ur investing cost is as high as r getting then at the conclusion in what way we got good reviews and votng on our post big bot
they had their great effort
Basically, you spent 2.5 steem on your promotion and got some good results, which is exactly the purpose of bid bots.
Exactly, it was great promotion. I think if more people used them and drove up the bid prices... then people would only use them if they really believed their content was high quality, thus perhaps creating a better trending page... but I guess we'll see how it all plays out!
Hey, top follow up track! Glad you picked up some more Cryptobabes :D
I'm just wondering about this:
Currently, I don't see how it would work out that way, but am happy to be educated.
To me, more users would mean fuller bidding rounds (depending on what limit the Bot has for ROI) and thus a smaller vote = less promotion. The only winners here being the Bot owner and delegator/s.
Anyway, the 'experiment' continues and hopefully Steem will make it out the other side!
Thanks man! When bid values exceed payout values (so a negative ROI for users) then instead of an arbitrage opportunity, bid bots will create a true market for promoting content. If users can only use bid bots at a loss, then every dollar spent on that promotion is presumably backed by content worthy of that promotion cost. Does that make sense?
Of course, as you mention, the down side is that the bid bot owners/delegators will be making an increasingly bigger ROI for doing basically nothing lol.
I think it would be a cool experiment for the community to publicly create a bid bot and burn the private key, and then the account just powers up all the bids, but essentially all STEEM/SBDs sent to that account would be powered up forever. So it's kinda like burning the STEEM, which would profit the whole community rather than a few individuals.
Another song title you could use...Sad but true. You guys did pretty well breaking even in this trainwreck of the last week if that's the case, well done, very nice exposure to the Tenacious D of steemit. Did you ever think of becoming a power trio?
lol there's been talk of collaborating with a parrot at some point in the future! and I think we all deserve a market bounce sometime soon 😎
Lol SteemBert!
Yip lol, that's the guy! 😎
Haha you need to dye his head white so he has the steem emblem on top of his head, he has the nice blue coat for it! You need to teach that thing how to comment, all they need to know is nicepost.
That's awesome! It cracks me up that people get pissed on here when someone they don't know rises high in the trending. That is like the used car salesman telling someone, "I would sell you that $60,000 barely driven car but I don't like the shirt you are wearing." Ha, self righteous people are comical in my book. IF that parrot can play an instrument by the way you might have viral gold.
I know right? every time I try to use bots I loose my ass. To only loose 2.5 SBD you are doing great. Keep up the good work.
A possible downside you don't mention with using bots is that you might just be assisting in the process of 'sucking wealth upwards' to the people who delegate to bots - clearly from your massive reputation gain, this is mainly going to the early adopters.
You've clearly gained from using them, but I think the people who run them and delegate to them benefit even more.
Everyone else who doesn't use them, however, loses, which means that if individuals are going to act rationally they must use also use them - this basically empowers the wealthy.
Surely it's a strategy that just increases inequality, distorts the reputation system and basically just puts people off joining, thus undermining the whole platform?
Isn't it basically a WIN (bot owners/ leasers) win (bot users) LOSE (everyone else) situation.
I'm aware that fryst who runs one of the bots has a severely individualistic outlook on life so literally couldn't give a toss about the consequences of his actions for everyone else, but I had the feeling you two were a bit more 'socialist' in nature, and had some kind of ethical break that prevented you from engaging in activities that undermined the broader social base?
Maybe I was wrong, or maybe you've turned? It is hard to support the commons when it's economically irrational to do so at an individual level after all.
At some point I might just say fuck it all and just delegate all of my stake to bots for return, might be the only way to become and real steem WINNER, it's certainly the easiest!
Thanks for the comment, you make some good points, especially the one about distorting the reputation system.
I personally view the bid bots as just another Steem experiment, Steemit could put an end to the bid bots any time they want, but they are letting it play out. I personally like their hands-off approach. I don't think any individual can know how Steem/Steemit is supposed to evolve, blockchains are just a dance between code and human self-interests.
I think it's important to assume that the whales who are profiting from the bid bots, are the same whales who were previously engaged in less transparent self-voting schemes, in order to maximize their ROI. To me, bid bots are just the lesser of the two evils, since at least now people can promote their content in a meaningful way. That wasn't the case before. What would be great is a blockchain based bid bot system that burns all the STEEM received. Obviously this would have to be permanently backed by a massive benevolent whale... @steemit (cough).
Personally I think the most obvious way to fix Steemit's underlying distribution problem is to move to an account based voting system with oracles. Then bid bots would no longer function. I think this may be on the roadmap but I'm not sure it's possible.
Everyone can and should run or use bid bots right now if they want to. That's currently the way the game is being played. It would be like playing baseball and not stealing bases cause you think the game would be better without stealing. Meanwhile, everyone else is stealing bases.
To me, bid bods seem to have way more pros than cons given the current and past states of Steem, so I think it's an experiment worth seeing though. And the more people that use them, the more accurate the experiment results will be.
Hi,
Thanks for the detailed reply,
The sociological term, which also incorporates the 'hardware element' into its definition is 'transhuman assembalge'.
I'm kind of with you on using bid-bots in the sense that if everyone (or at least the vast majority) used bots as much as they could then IF they are detrimental to the platform then it would just make their negative effects more obvious, and reveal the results more quickly.
Of course weird things might happen with scaling up the use, you never know!
I'm also for trying these things out... I did try out bots a while back, but with only a few $ each time, I made a positive ROI for the most part, but just didn't really like the feel of it very much.
I agree about oracles, I mean what's the point of competing with everyone to hit the trending pages when writing about different things, it doesn't make any sense.
The burn option is something I hadn't thought about... Way to techno-socialist to be considered I think.
I personally won't be using them to promote my own posts, it doesn't make sense for me, as I said, increasing delegation to vote buying services is a possibility though, which is effectively the same as using them to promote yourself were ethics are concerned!
Nice baseball analogy.
thanks for the detailed and educational discourse you two!!
That looks like a good result. And also you can't forget that You have also won a good amount of STEEM Power. So that 2.5 "loss" in the long term it is not a loss I guess. I wish I had that much to invest in some of my posts to promote them eheheh :) but it is a good case study. :) thanks for sharing it.
Yeah, we counted the Steem Power in the overall value received, but you're right in that Steem Power goes up slowly over time. Another interesting note though is that using bid bots forces people to power up half the STEEM they're using to promote the post.
Yeah and that is something positive when it comes to influence the value of steem in the market. The only negative that I see with bots in this days is that is making a lot of people lose the sense of community and engaging and being creative. :( I feel the community have been really "dead" latelly
I feel like when steem is down, lots of ppl stop engaging.. i’ve been through a few of these down markets and that’s the trend. For me... this is the time to be extra active and post!
Yeah always create no matter what :) because I love what I do and I clearly don't do it just for the rewards... otherwise I probably would have gave up long time ago lolol
Haha @steembirds, I enjoyed big time the lyrics and the performance of your ironical Bid Bot Experiment song.
But I think that I've enjoyed even more the fact that a post filled with true Sense of Humor, remarkably funny eloquence & hilarious sarcasm finally had reached the fucking top of the Trending Page. ¡The Mother fuck'n top! 'They' like it or not!! LoL
On other hand, as for @sergiomendes comment. I fully agree with @jaybird & him. Lose some money in promotion through the use of bid bots, could be paid back as profit only in kind. But basically, also in detriment of the sense of community and engagement whilst we are being creative in the process like they say.
Btw, and on this "dead" department.. ¿Do any of you speak or understand spanish? };)
Cheers!!
I guess we only can go with the flow and see where this will take us. And no I can't speak Spanish:/ portuguese speaker in here eheheh
Ah! portuguese then @sergiomendes? Well, maybe not so far as to be able to decrypt & understand thoroughly my fearsome Spanglish. Hahahaha }:)
Cheers!!
You don’t necessarily have to hit the main trending page for this to be successful for content u believe in.. trending in whatever category is most relevant might be enough & then u don’t need as much investment capital ;)
I get what You mean I think. And yeah you don't need to hit the trending page to be doing good profit but when the majority of the posts there now are using bids to get there you lose the opportunity to be seen by different people and be discovered. And to have that money to invest you need to be in a high position already or otherwise it gets difficult to be found. And as an artists you just want people to appreciate what You create.
Epic Song :)
Please watch my video about steembottracker.com. Because of your too big bid you made everyone lose money on their investment. EVERYONE who was using the bot you bid so high on, lost money. So please do not use them unless you know how. They can be profitable if people don't get greedy.
The goal of bid bots is not for them to be profitable to the people that use them. That's just a short term arbitrage opportunity... the free market will always close that gap. Inevitably, the bids will become higher than the payouts and that's when we will have a true market for promoting content.
However, currently they can be profitable, and they could always be when more bots are added. However, it will never be profitable if people bid out of control.
Posted using Partiko Android
You're basically asking everyone to work together to share an arbitrage opportunity. That's just not how markets work. Plus, individuals profiting on bid bots adds very little (if any) value to the community. Whereas, bid prices that represent a real promotion cost (above zero) will add value to the community because they will represent content that's presumably worthy of that promotion cost. Basically you're looking at bid bots as a way to make free money and I'm looking at them as a way to promote quality content.
I look at bidbots as a way to make profit and promote at the same time. However, I will concede your point on just adding value to the community. I have been trending plenty of times in my dtube career of 42 days, for quality of content, nothing more. Ideally, yes, I would like to see large groups of people use bots a certain way, one that is profitable for all of us. There is no reason to bid $300 on a bot that MAX vote value is $200, but for some reason, people do. It is because they do not know how to bid. Hence, I made a video bringing awareness to this issue. So you guys may say that the only way to be trending is to pay for it, I disagree. That assumes those who make good content wont be trending based on the merit of their work, which they will. I appreciate you guys bringing attention to the bidbots in general, cause they are the promotion tool of STEEM, however, I disagree with your conclusions. That is what is beautiful about freedom of speech tho, isn't it?
LOL you used all bid bots on this?... Im surprised there wasn't more profit, at least if you have more people viewing the post i would expect more people also voting it... At the end you could say you invested those 2.5 steem in promotion and got some value out of it...
Also you are right, bid bots are profitable only when steem price is going up, i remember that from the randowhale age, i learned it was only profitable to use it when price was pumping, then for some reason the bot got to sleep every time the price was going up lol, so i got tired of any bid bot....
Yeah, ultimately we were happy just for the exposure!
I think there is a way to count views of YouTube embed but just embedding the link doesn't by default count views outside of YouTube.
Interesting, I was under the impression that embedding counted most of the views whereas just sharing the link doesn't. I definitely get a lot more views registered on youtube when I use the embed option but I'll look into it more.
Using bid bots is risky but its worth it.. The whales have an opportunity to see your post. I have a question which of the bots do you prefer one to use ?
Indeed! Still experimenting... I have not yet had a problem with any of them. But I do prefer to start with the bid bots that let you up vote the post right away... that way more of the curation rewards are sent to the author and you have a better chance of profit or at least breaking even 😎
That's if the whales look at trending. I'm sure they have other ways to find good content that actually makes steemit look good