Love them or hate them, they're a presence on Steemit that seems to be here to stay.

I have to admit I have frowned upon bidbots in the past - it's the reason I no longer look at the trending section.

When I first joined Steemit the posts on the trending page were either legit awesome, had great friends, or both.

Support on Steemit

My whole stance on bidbots changed a few months ago when my earnings sunk. Life is great on Steemit when you have support, but the moment you lose that support things start sucking.

I'm very fortunate to be a @sndbox fellow for many many reasons.

The boys are incredibly inspiring, the way they continuously set standards on the platform and the projects they come up with. The community is also great and so supportive (although I dont get to spend much time with them) and of course there's that amazing Sndbox rewards system.

Being a Sndbox fellow has definitely shaped me into a better blogger these last few months and I feel in the incubator program I am rewarded for the time and effort I put in to my blogs.

Out in the greater Steemit world that doesn't really happen. I see it time and time again.

My Sndbox days are numbered though and I will graduate with my batchmates in June 2018. Wether I make the cut for alumni I don't know, so I'm trying to prepare for life without the nurturing environment of the incubator.

Lucky for me I belong to other communities that also have support systems in place. In fact we launched @SteemPh.Trail for that purpose - a way to support the #SteemPh community and encourage better content. And I'm sure @SteemPh is not the only group brainstorming ways to support their communities.

Shout Out to my peeps at @SteemPh, @TeamAustralia, @TheAlliance, @SSG-Community, @SteemUSA, @Sndbox ❤

What if one day I lose my support?

I've been on that road and I went through a range of emotions.

First was hurt and confusion

I don't know how I lost it, sure I've had a few crappy posts here and there but I like to think most of my posts have at least 500 words and 3 decent pictures. Community wise I work my ass off. Maybe it's my personality? So queue weeks of self loathing and internal conflict.

Second was resentment

I began resenting those who continued to receive support, these people would often post twice sometimes 3 to 4 times a day, short posts, sometimes just a photo. I just couldn't get my head around it, I still can't. In the end I put it down to "Not my SP, not my problem.", resulting to this self talk "This is why yo ass needs to power up!"

Third and last stage was defiance

I refuse to be a bitter self entitled "victim". I decided I'm not entitled to any support and I should just be grateful I had it when I did. It also made me realize if I wanted to succeed I need to figure out how to support myself.

Hellooo bidbots

I'm beginning to think bidbots may be for the little people. Sure by using it we are making someone out there very wealthy but why should that stop us from seizing the opportunity to support ourselves?

After some thought, and months of resisting the trend, I started my bidbots experiment and here's what I got.

Now... IF I got this right...

You'll see in the ROI column I got my initial SBD investment back (give or take). You'll also see that not only did I get my money back, I also got free Steem Power and that's how I'm looking at it - Free Steem Power!

Pitfalls

I tried conducting this experiment a couple of months ago but didn't take proper notes and I didn't use SteemBotTracker made by the awesome @yabapmatt.

I wondered then if others were also placing bids without knowing how many people have already placed bids and how much.

I saw this as a problem and a possibility of a loss in my investment.

Ultimately

The way I'm thinking, if I continue to invest 10 SBD into bidbots I could get about 5 free SP per post, more if I up my bid.

Currently I try to post 5 times a week. I'd like to be able to post 3 times a week and still be able to power up at a reasonable rate.

See what happened here? I'm taking control of my destiny. At least that's what it feels like 😊

My goal here isn't to land on the trending page but to get a little extra SP boost for every post.

More SP means the more $$ I can drop on people and community projects.

Now, would I abuse the system and self upvote crappy photos with no text? We good! I got that out of my system within my 2nd week on Steemit.

I don't really get why you can't self upvote a post older than 3 days, but the bots let me know when I do that so that's pretty cool.

Everything considered it's a

I like having the option of being able to use their services. They're not what they used to be. Now the bots have blacklists and 3 day post limits, you can see the operators are trying to minimise abuse.

I also like the idea of getting a SP boost on my posts. I reckon that will be a welcomed help on the SP front and I'd love be a dolphin come graduation time. Imagine that!!!

What's your thoughts on bidbots? Yay? Nay? Why? And are my calculations correct?

🌻 Arly

🍀 All pictures courtesy of Picsart, Pixabay, Pinterest🍀