I really hope bots get banned.... This platform is supposed to be about people creating content and other people interacting with it. Until bots are banned, Steemit is not really an authentic decentralized social network site. Wait till McDonalds or Coca-Cola starts paying bots, the trending page will become corporate shit over night...

Thanks for sharing these results Max. I did my own mini experiment and found the same thing. It's better to bot...for now.

cheers
Anj xx

PS I'm on your list of most weighty voters. You're not on mine, mr mofo!! XD

Huhu, i should be using bots too but I stopped for a while now. I will start again soon...

Yes, I suspected that this might have been the outcome. It is a bit disappointing. I also have a circle of posts going around for botting, but it really puts the pressure on to write posts that are worth the bot.

Very informative @spiritualmax.. Simple yet clear explanation.. It isn't perfect but....bots away! I liked that part... Thanks

Love that you did this test and I honestly supspected the same. It is also why I can't blame or yell at people using bots as it is a service everyone can use and yes pay for. Until Steemit comes up with better ways it just seems like boting is required if you really want to gain traction and get ahead. I do hate saying that honestly but it is what it is for now.

@rok-sivante, wow... You are one with a generous heart, it is people like you that motivates others that post  creative and original content to remain at steemit. @therealwolf thanks to you too. @spiritualmax thanks too, you often encourage me by always visiting my blog. But as for the bot stuff, well it will favour you because you have some reasonable amount of upvote already before using the bot, unlike someone that does not get any upvote and uses the bot, such person is gaining little or nothing.

Any indication of how it impacted the follower curation rewards? Do the bots absorb the whole piece of their upvotes reward or does it get spread out among the commenters?

Nice post ....
Thanks for sharing

Another great post, I like the short and simple ones a lot. I have came to the same conclusion myself about bots. I try not to use them on every single post, however I feel like I am missing out on extra SP when I do not do this. So I do use them on my posts that I feel have the highest quality, like you said this increases visibility.

This is quite pretty helpful Rukka! Then botting is !

Depinds, Sometimes is better to use bots, to be recognize by others

>I wanted to leave it, but my content is high quality, and if people like us don't use the bots, they will be used only by exploiters and low effort posters, therefore filling the hot and trending pages with bullshit.

This is something which I just tried to explain. I don't think, that's a good idea to fight everybody who uses a bot, but to use them to our advantage instead and promote quality. In the end, they're our funds and we should be free to use them however we please.

Hold on a second, you shouldn't include the SP you got from the botting in your calculations. That's obviously going to be higher no matter how you slice it. These are the two scenarios that warrant comparison for SP use:

1. No bots, use money that would have been used for bots to buy SP directly.
2. Use bots.

Everything also depends on the prices. If the prices go down, you may even have lost on bot when you compare to the alternative of using the money spent on bots to directly convert to SP instead.

This comparison would be very interesting to see.

I am very good at maths.... Immediately I found out how botting works, I knew it was more profitable... I just made a personal decision to ensure the quality of my posts is Good.

A great experiment. I waited for the results and now I can conclude. Although personally I am far from your scale, but I was not sure about using botting. Now I have drawn some conclusions. It turned out informatively
Thank you

When I use bots, I try to get the vote right after I post which usually makes it profitable. The problem I noticed is that over the 7 days it takes for payout, the vote value drops, drops and drops some more. One of my post went from $33 to 21 within the span of waiting for payout which started as a little profit but ended as a loss. It happens naturally somehow. Has anyone else experienced this and/or know what causes such draining of the reward?

Kudos! I did a similar experiment on a much less grand scale and without as much data but I came to the same conclusions. Bots are like the force, use the force. What is the best amount to spend on the bots or is more always better?

I'm so glad I discovered bots within my first few days on here. By my third post I was using them, and I credit my getting off to a fast start to that. 

Since I've not ever been here at a time before the bot dominance began, there has never seemed anything wrong with them to me. I just look at it as paying for advertising while I grow my follower base.

When I was on FB I saw how boosting posts changed performance of pages (like 3k followers with very little engagement after 2 years without boosting, or 3k highly engaged followers after 3 months with boosting!). So as soon as I found this "boosting" method on here I knew it was just a part of succeeding on the platform.

I don't have that generous followers.. So I pump up with bots..
The numbers of my payouts are just reinvested..

You did gain at least one follower. Tho my addition would have happened anyway. 
Just an opinion. The one who gains most from the bot is the bot owner. If the bot was not profitable, people would not program them.
Bots once programmed require no time or any more effort from the programmer, the possibility arises where the bots will be taking more from the platform then the whales.
You also then have the situation where one person makes 25 bots and all use the same program working under alternative identities.
What would happen if the use of bots for votes was prohibited? and may result in loss or confiscation of account. Where there is so much controversy over the use of bots and their value, as a bot does not take the quality of a vote into account.