About tradebots

[fcae]

I've been thinking of making a tradebot and I'd like to know just what it takes to have a tradebot running. What I already know is that you need to pay every month to keep the bot running and that you need to have a good amount of resources to get started. How profitable is it though? There's no real way to know just how many trades per day bots get in this game, I'm especially worried about that since the game is... not so popular compared to how it was years ago.

[Vidual Cadet]

I don't know much about hosting a bot, except I've set up the script, and all of that.

 

But what I think I would do, if I wanted a representation, of what profit to expect, and how long it would take to get into profit, I would look at other tradebots.

 

You should look at bots with the same amount of money, you plan to invest more or less. Look at how much they've donated (to get more listings), also notice how they are premium (to get double the listings), and what they're listing are about... Do they only buy craft hats, and flip them for 1 scrap, or do they do unusuals, and make a crapload of buy orders.

 

Let's look at a relatively new bot.

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199107627144

This bot has donated 129 dollars, which means it gets  2700 ish, (20*129 + 100ish+). It has around 1200 listings active, the bigger part of them are sell orders.

The last week it looks like its backpack value went from 524$ to 557$, meaning it made 33$ish dollars in a week.

This bot is hosted by gladiator.tf, meaning the owner has to pay 14(?) keys per month, to rent the bot. That means that it costs 14*1.56(current key price?) = 21.84$ rounded up to 22 dollars per month to run.

 

The bot's profit should theoretically increase as its value get larger.

 

If weekly profit is 33$ excluded running costs, that means monthly profit included running costs is 33*4,5-22=126,5$.

 

When start inventory is 500$ from liquid items, and 120$ to donate to bptf, then total startup costs are 620$.

With this pattern you should be in profit after 4.9 months, because:

620/126,5=4,9 months

 

If you were to use the opensource one: Autobot, then it would only cost like 5$ each month to host it, if you figured out how to do it. Btw, this is the same script gladiator.tf uses, just slightly modified.

 

From the patterns I've seen, The bigger the better.

 

Also, PAST EVENTS AREN'T INDICATIVE OF FUTURE ONES, AND THIS EXAMPLE IS TOO LIMITED TO PREDICT ANYTHING.

[Inspector]

I have owned This bot for over 11 months.

 

I started out with 160 keys+@ and have put some money into donations.

 

Got 10~15 keys profits per month. 

 

 

It is profitable. And the more money you put in the higher the profits will be

 

I recommend starting with atleast 200 +@ keys.

 

Also get help from the Gladiator.tf discord and Look up for bot guides