I'm fully with you on the 10x self-upvote reference number. Especially when growing a bit bigger in Steem Power it becomes more difficult to reach this number when having 1 daily post.

Looking at things from the 10x self upvote angle I was also quite disappointed in most 'support groups' that provide daily upvotes. (SBI, Curator, ...) So I created my own model and started an initiative about a year ago called @upvoteshares finding a way to give active bloggers very good returns in upvotes (around x24 times self-upvote now and growing for existing shareholders) while it also allows sponsorships to minnows helping the platform forward.

You might find the concept I came up with interesting seeing how we think alike when it comes down to Steem. I completely broke it down in this post I made a couple months ago. Would love to hear your opinion if you find some time.