There is a service called ResteemService.com run by @jones420. It offers upvotes and resteems for money.

I decided to invest some of my SBD to test it out.

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The Offer

The protocol is simple and similar to many upvote bots of recent times:

• transfer some SBD or SP to specific account with the link to your post in the memo
• expect that magic will happen to your post

In this case there are four options:

1. pay 0.75 SBD or SP and receive 200 upvotes from various random bots
2. pay 1 SBD or SP and get a resteem from @jones420
3. pay 1.5 SBD or SP and get resteems both from @jones420 and @bago
4. pay 2 SBD or SP and get the whole package - everything from above

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Testing Scenario

1. I created four almost identical posts about four stages of the cycling race. Two sentences and a video. Intentionally nothing attractive.

2. I posted them one after another in five minute intervals.

3. After each post I transferred requested amount to @jones420 - first post with 0.75 SBD, second post with 1 SBD, third post with 1.5 SBD and fourth post with 2 SBD

4. This way I invested 5.25 SBD in total

The transfers:

It took me 16 minutes to post all four articles and transfer all four amounts.

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No Promotion

I didn't promote the posts in any other way. No word of mouth, steemit.chat, discord, social media, no nothing. I wanted the post to be as invisible as possible. Which is not hard.

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Immediate Results

My second and third post were resteemed on schedule:

Upvotes were nowhere to be seen. Fourth post was not resteemed yet.

So I went for a late night run. It was a nice and easy 6 km run.

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Situation After One Hour

My four posts one hour and six minutes after last post was published:

You can see that votes with first and fourth post are around 200, give or takes 30 votes.

Rewards are as they are. Nothing special.

The Fourth post was resteemed too:

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Some Background Checking

I intentionally didn't research upvote behaviour of these various bots. Now it was time to check from where the upvotes were coming:

Let's take a look at last three upvoters:

All three were created on 21st of December 2016.

All three have 16 SP.

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Situation After Two Hours

Upvotes are above 200. Rewards are slightly higher. Still nothing special.

The Verdict

The service delivers what they promise.

The benefit of resteems and upvotes is insignificant.

200+ upvotes with 8 SP (half voting power of 16 SP account) is of no worth.

The Outcome

I could spend these 5.25 SBD better. I won't repeat this excercise.

No, I wont go into the ethics and moral and platform impact or whatever of this service. You can comment about it if you like, though.

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Cover photo by Davide Ragusa @ unsplash