Aah, very intelligent question! In fact, I was waiting for this point to be raised by someone. I'm glad you did.
Let me clarify again that not everyone uses bots to directly reap rewards from them. Earning direct profit from upvote bots is one of the many reasons to use them ...and admittedly the most popular one. Some use them to give higher visibility to their posts and some to increase their reputation score too. Everyone has got their own reasons.
With this post, I wanted to caution noobs by warning about the increased risk associated with upvote bots to book a profitable deal with them. You are free to use them at your own discretion knowing the risks very well.
You must have also noticed that I used the upme bot on the sixth day to minimize the market risk. I also took utmost care to bid at the last moment to book about 350% return on my payment.
Another thing you can note is I put a bid on a bot which had the highest vote value in the market. When the vote worth is big enough, it would need a bigger amount bid at the last moment to disrupt my calculation. So bigger bots are safer to bid a small amount. Finally, I'd like to mention that I was mentally prepared to loss my bid amount. It's like how much you can afford to loss. Not all minnows can afford to loss their money and forget about it. The risks at stake are higher than perceived and that is the reason many people repent later. Hope you got my point now!
Oh. I understood your point straight away... I was just being super cheeky!
Because of you, your excellently explained post and your suprer generous comments I've started a spreadsheet and worked out all the maths behind the bidbots.
I can now see that there is potential for profit... but the ROI needs to be closer to 80% or above to make it worthwhile (assuming SBD doesn't decrease in that time).
I'll admit that before your post I saw bidbots as virtually money for nothing, so I owe you a great debt for encouraging intelligent decision-making. Thanks heaps for everything!
Thank you!
P.S.:
When you talk about 80% ROI, do consider to go through the example given in the post once more. It's for 200% return that still gives a loss.
Ah, sorry, I meant 80% ROI as stated in the Bottracker tool... Their ROI suggestions already remove the loss of the curation rewards.