I've often considered writing the equivalent of a robotrader for this. If you're paying for a sedbox and want to use it to the fullest re: maximizing your ratio then some automated attempt to predict demand and start seeding the right thing early would likely go a long way.

Unlike predicting the stock market, competition wouldn't be very fierce, and I think the tracker API would give you most of what you need.

It's in the long list of things I'll do if I ever find a big pile of time.

If the torrent is already well-seeded it's ok, a 1567th seed won't make a difference so don't bother with them. It's the less seeded torrents where you can put some efforts and do something good.

See my other comment, good seeders carry most of the network these days. Upload bandwidth has become huge since BitTorrent first debuted so true P2P for resource reasons is not really a necessity anymore.

Over here (austria), you are pretty free to leech as much as you want, but as soon as you actually start seeding at any capacity, people start paying very close attention.