I have been optimising the @photocontests bot behind the scenes. Some of you might have noticed small changes. Overall the height of upvotes has seen an increase and the amount of upvotes a decrease.

Voting percentage

I have made the height of the upvote you receive dynamic. Every hour the bot checks if voting power is above 95% and adjusts the voting power. For now this is every hour, this can be increased if necessary.

Commenting

The daily upvote for commenting 5 times has been removed, you still earn XP and get a confirmation when you have made 5 comments. This means you can earn two upvotes per day for sharing two photos.

Hashtags

To avoid abuse of the hashtags I have removed all other hashtags other than those I curate actively. The contests hashtags. This is to avoid abuse from users and bots. Unfortunately we cannot have everything in this world.

Reputation

Further to avoid abuse every user with a reputation lower than 25 is ignored by the bot.

Steem-Python tutorials

Interested in learning how I make these bots? I have made a new blog @steempytutorials in cooperation with @amosbastian. On this blog starting next week you will be able to find tutorials taking you through the process of creating your own bot. This will start of simple and go more advanced over time. To set yourself up you can start by reading through this post first.

Monday: foodphotography and animalphotography
Tuesday: landscapephotography and cityscapephotography
Wednesday: architecturalphotography and vehiclephotography
Thursday: macrophotography and colourfulphotography
Friday: streetphotography and portraitphotography
Saturday: sportsphotography and smartphonephotography
Sunday: goldenhourphotography and longexposurephotography

Play in fairlotto

Useful links

Photography Contests FAQ
5 Ways To Increase Your Followers And Their Engagement On Steemit
My Posting Template