Re: Buying Votes = Infinite Profit

in #steemit6 years ago

I wrote this earlier:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@hodlorbust/buying-votes-infinite-profit

Then spent a few STEEM and SBD to upvote the post using paid votes. Some votes netted me ~36% ROI or as much as ~47% ROI.

Here's my overall plan:

  1. Put a % of my regular earnings into buying upvotes for SteemIt posts,
  2. Get 110-115% of my payment in author rewards,
  3. Spend the SBD and STEEM rewards on buying more upvotes. This will achieve a growth on the STEEM Power amounts leftover.
  4. Use the STEEM Power to delegate to a bot (or bots) that pays % revenues back to delegators: http://isteemd.com/
  5. Use the income that comes in from delegating STEEM power to fund additional bought votes.
  6. Rinse, wash, repeat.

It's tough to tell what the rate of return will be for this strategy without having a more accurate breakdown of how author rewards work, which seems to be variable instead of 1/2 STEEM and STEEM Power each.

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Also, it could severely backfire as well. Buying vote to shoot up your posts which aren't written properly could lead to large downvotes.

And the ROI is around 10 - 15% not 47%. Don't spread misinformation.

Hey Littleboy,

I'm sorry for the misinformation I had been confused on Smartsteem's platform where they give you a range - the range is based on curation rewards though, they pay a fixed 10%. I've found through this post I've had more luck with steembottracker though.

As @littleboy said it: the ROI is most of the time around 10%, even with bid-bots. The only difference is that you can gamify the timing of the vote, while with @smartmarket from Smartsteem the timing is always dynamic, which means you get 10% (or what the current ROI is at the time) however old the post might be.

With that said: creating posts just for the sake of buying votes is not appreciated in the Steem community and will results in flags.

Instead, invest time into writing creative, honest posts/contributions and promote them with a reasonable amount.

Additionally, you can either sell your votes with Smartsteem or delegate to Smartsteem to earn ROI, while the first option gives you the freedom to vote manually as well and not having your Steempower locked.

With that said: creating posts just for the sake of buying votes is not appreciated in the Steem community and will results in flags.

What do you mean? This is literally every paid post on the platform. None of those would have been created if it wasn't for the sole purpose of buying votes for them.

but how we can calculate the ROI between 10-15 %?

you are right we should build up ourselves with quality content only then we can succeed

~36% to ~47% ROI ???!
Honestly, what are you smoking ???

Yeah I am sorry about that, that was a piece of misinformation from me misunderstanding the SmartSteem.com interface. They pay 47% on the dollar when the curation reward is higher, meaning that the ROI is a fixed 10%, a little higher with steembottracker bots.

Anyways the plan falls on it's face should I churn out crap content. I made another post a few minutes ago that I hope adds value and creates positive conversation.

Better power it up instead. It is more profitable in the long run.

When steem price drops, I think the profit will too.

when i was doing my original calculations i was looking to achieve 20% ROI. This means that steem would need to net net 20% losses week over week in order to sustain losses.

That said I'm unsure why ROI for this post dropped 12% in seconds...

Promo bot flagged you, along with a few others including myself.

Mate, if you have thousands of dollars to pump into Steem, use it to power up your account. You can then delegate that SP to Smartsteem or whatever other account will bring you a passive income. You'll certainly profit that way. Not this way.

I do see the error of my ways now, and I'll try to create engaging and useful content going forward.

Thanks for your thoughts man and I will strive to become a better community member!

Flagged for many reasons. Let's say we flagged for disagreement on rewards. The other reasons are already in the comments.

Agreed. I would hope the vote sellers will blacklist those who are not producing good content. It's bad for Steemit. If the trending page is full of crap it will put people off. Just watch the Steem price plummet and your profits disappear. Better to invest in creating and supporting good content to build the community. You will make more later when there are millions here.

Thanks for your opinions guys and I'm sorry to've let you down - but the lesson is learned.

I just created a unique and hopefully insightful ICO review that the community might appreciate.

smart, why doesnt everyone do this? how did you cone up with this? and how do you plan on buying a bot? where do you go to get one?

also, does the amount of votes you buy effect the ROI?

Anyone can do it. The difference being some people actually choose to create content rather than use a bullshit approach like this.

And people often lose money when buying votes so I greatly doubt this person will make the profits they predict.

He won’t be buying a bot, just delegating. There’s a big difference.

Oh and don’t expect a reply. This person isn’t interested in interacting with people on the platform. He/she is just here for profit.

Hence my flag.

Lol get em Mazzle! Most people don’t actually write a post and draw attention to themselves when they decide to use bots as a revenue stream lol 😂

I didn't realize there was anything wrong with it? Is it against policy?

Nope it’s not against policy, it is however frowned upon.

So I wrote an article that has substance adds value and bought some votes for it. Hope this is more in tune with the community's views, and I'm sorry for doing the dirty without realizing it with this original post :(

Well done @mazzle. Is not just a bullshit approach but it's also a harmful one for the community and for the other users as well; not to mention promoting garbage content by buying upvotes. Is not necesarily bad buying few upvotes for some extra visibility, but turning it into a tactic... @mazzle, check the other comments in this section, many agree with this tactic in here, so i'm sure a flag to them would be a nice lesson to understand this is not acceptable . Glad to see someone stands up against this. Yoohooo!!

Hey Mazzle!

Steem is a solution built for content and incentivizes people to create and interact. You can see from my other posts I've created some that discuss a wide variety of topics, among them crypto and ICOs and management techniques. I'm here for the long haul - but when I tripped over positive ROI from buying votes I was overwhelmed by the opportunity.

Sorry you'd decided to flag, and I hope I haven't caused too much discontent here. Glad to write you back with your thoughts, though, this is my first post that has 1+ reply!

@hodlorbust, steem is a token/currency; the steemit platform is built instead to help the people incentivize other people for their content. That means, many users will incentivize others, and usually for good to great content. Which means, those ones would highly disagree for bad, plagiaristic or shady tactics promotion, and thus downvoting it. If you're here for the long-haul, then why do you promote bot abuse and pool raping through this post ?? Also sending like 50 SBD to jerry banfield's bot and tens of other sbd's to other bots doesn't help this platform neither the short or the long-haul. And simply using jerry's services harms this platform. He's a total douchebag and manipulator and a misleader. Yes you created other posts, and those may have been more fairly rewarded. But this one you just wrote is not one to go the same way mate. So if you dearly look for steemit to go up, just be the example you want to see mate. if you've been overwhelmed then you have to re-analyse what's going on; can't think with emotions here; be wise and responsible, cause many will read this crap (esp if it gets trending) and is all going to hell. And one is to see an opportunity, and another thing is to be greedy mate. Don't blame the alcohool for you having a car accident when drunk, if you know what i mean. If you feel that sorry for this, than you can dearly choose to cut the rewards on this post. Just go to it's settings/edit post and choose no rewards. This way you clearly set an example, and you clearly show you had no bad intentions. Then i'm sure @mazzle will remove his flag as well; we all make mistakes, and we all forgive if the person is willing to right the wrong.

I'm unaware of Jerry personally I was just trying to maximize utility. I am sorry, but if I'm willing to put $100s and over the next 52 weeks $10s 000s into STEEM then the only thing I'm doing is putting STEEM price up over the long haul. If I've found a loophole to turn crypto into more crypto I'd love to take advantage of that.. then shout it from the mountains.

Mate, if you have that much money to put into Steem then use it to power up your account. Then you'll truly be building a largely passive income stream in the crypto world.

Buying votes only leads to bot owners gaining more profit. Trust me on this, I've been around here a lot longer than you and have run my own tests.

Power up your account, that's the smartest approach.

Understood, and I may go that route but first I want to see if I can modify my plan to only include high-quality posts that add value and help people learn, grow or make decisions.

Thanks for your multiple comments and I'm sorry if I'd let you down with my original ignorance here!

we all make mistakes. Be careful with this new strategy. Your version of high quality could be very different to someone else’s.

Yeah, Jerry had tried as well to maximize utility, and many others as well. If you've found a loophole is one thing. Now if you use it to bring goods to you, but it demeans others, then that's not a right and fair way to get on with it . Try shout this from the mountains ;).

You need to be cautious when reaching the trending page. If the post is low effort, such as this one, you can expect to receive flags.

Also be careful when buying votes. The ROI is unlikely to be what you expect.

Just had a look at the payout calculations on steemworld - this guy might make about 0.25 STEEM profit....although somehow I kind of doubt it.

Exactly right. I hate these posts promoting voting bots. They only bring profit to the bot owner in the long run.

I will test buying votes and reporting ROI, I thought it was a valid use of the STEEM platform to report on this opportunity to others who are just coming aboard STEEM and might find it useful. Most of the folks here are attracted to earning money - here's a way to do it!

What you are proposing is scammy bullshit. You deserve to have the shit downvoted out of you.

It's not at all the way to do it. As you'll soon find out.

There's a few steps:

  1. Buy votes from services like smartsteem.com or find people running their own bots on steembottracker.
  2. They earn you a % earnings, even if Steem/USD falls gradually over the week
  3. Half of it is left over as Steem Power which you then delegate to bots in order to receive a daily supply of SBD.

I actually started this process by buying a bunch of delegated SP hoping I could turn a profit with selling my votes to people, but that racket doesn't make $.

As others have pointed out , if you boost shitposts be prepared to get flagged and lose a lot of money !!

Thanks for the comment, I didn't really realize that the quality was going to be so fiercely disliked. I thought that using Steemit to comment on how Steemit might profit would be praised instead of being a shitpost.

I've written a new post and bought some votes for it, I'm hoping that it's in tune with the community's views,...

This topic of boosting post is a very sensitive one , the main sensitivity comes from the fact that people view this as a "infinite money % gain" , which to be fair is a reasonable view in the first reading of the situation.

This however reflects poorly on the reputation of STEEMIT as it can be viewed as a ponzi scheme of infinite money pool , so to avoid any such misapprehension people here are very sensitive of how bid bots are used to reach trending page.

Having said that , you are not the first one nor will be the last one to be in this situation. Write posts that you think are quality posts and you will do well.

_Cheers

Hey @itstime Thank you for your time and explanation. I don't think it's a ponzi personally because I've seen many of them come and go, where my overall plan does involve churning out unique and interesting subjects and conversations. I think my original error was thinking that the description of the plan was one of those interesting subjects :) I wasn't aware of the backstory or that it may affect the community badly. I'm now well-versed in my mistake, and I do apologize to you and everyone.

Do you mind seeing my newest contender for a 'quality post'? Keep in mind yes I did use a ref link twice but I think all fair in love in war:

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@hodlorbust/bitfair-ico-review-up-to-1000x-leverage-on-all-your-favorite-crypto-40-now

Smart

So you consider proposing a scam then promoting the idea to the top of trending to be smart. You are clearly a complete idiot. I won't downvote you as you obviously need all the money you can get.

I'm very curious to see how a crowdsourced upvoting would do. Basically writers would submit their profile for review and if you decide they write well and that the user can attract viewers then you commit to paying their upvote and they split the earnings on the article with you. This could work really well for writers from third world countries who don't have capital to invest into upvotes, but that can come up with cool content. Just a random idea I'm putting out there.

I think we'll see Steem evolve with other use-cases and interfaces that allow this kind of interaction. It'd be democraticizing this industry and giving a voice to those that otherwise don't have one.. which is what crypto is all about.

I think that the idea behind Steem delegation is, in theory, achieving what you mean. If I have loads of SP and think a writer has done a great job, I'll upvote them (like I just did with this comment) and you get some change and exposure.

Crowdsourcing it and decentralizing it may be worthwhile ideas to look into. . like a community review panel with votes for some sample content?

Yeah and you could even add SMT's into the mix. Do something like steemhunt is doing and they also have a review process to approve or reject submissions. If I remember they add their steemit user as one of the beneficiary of your posts when you create a post via their frontend. You could do it this way you have a frontend where you can post your submission and then the person who is paying for your upvote is one of the beneficiaries of the post. Hope that makes sense?

Which brings me to my next idea :) , the ability to pay for bidbots with an SMT. Maybe have a specific SMT for that purpose. Would really do the steemit economy good imo.

Hey@hodlorbust. This is the wrong approach and you will only end up losing money by being down voted. There are no shortcuts here unless you invest and power up. This is hard work and takes time. Obviously you are looking for loopholes to fast track your self and your account. This is not a clever idea and you will fail badly.

I think I have a handle of it now, and I'm sorry for trying to take shortcuts. On my guesstimation spreadsheet at about 52 weeks of re-posting with re-bought votes and investing SP, it turns out to around 1.5x as much SBD from delegation than should I have just invested into powering up... and it's also more fun to create content :) That's the point, right?

I just posted a new blog post and bought some paid promotion for it, I'm hoping it's more in-tune with what the community is after.

I think what the community wants is people to be part of it. If you invest and power up you will find support from others.

Thanks for your input @cryptoandcoffee. I really was originally drawn to SteemIt because I have a number of outstanding book ideas I think I could promote here should I ever finish writing them, and the thought of user-driven economy for rewards and incentivization is exciting!

I do very much want to be a part of the community, and I see where my shortsightedness and ignorance caused me to have a disconnect. I am sorry for that.

I am glad you have some projects and this place is exciting. No need to apologize and look forward to reading your posts.