Very interesting.

I agree 100% that vesting steem and networking are more important than producing quality content. My rewards grew exponentially after SF3, when nanzo scoop added me to his autovote, pretty much on the basis of me just saying 'hey fellow Brit, we've got shit in common'.

And networking - now I'm working with taraz and anomadsoul on Steemonboarding (although that's temporarily on hold I THINK) and I've been added to the tribesteemup autovote, mainly because of sharing interests and the whole ecovillage thing I think.

It also helps that a couple of manual voters have powered up hugely in the last year - most obviously slobberchops.

So irrespective of the quality of my content, which hasn't been that great recently TBH as I'm a little bit burnt out I still get roughly the same vote per post.

Except when I write about Steem as you say, when I might get a vote worth twice as much as usual.

My 'elevator pitch' post earned $90 for example, highest earning in the last 12 months.

So yes - Vest, network, write about Steem if you want to earn!

On the following trail stuff, I didn't really get what you meant - do you mean following a voting trail? I don't see how that's going to get you more votes - I do follow Tribe Steem Up, but that's more out of courtesy as that account votes me, and I joined it after i'd been added. Also i only weight that at about 8% of my vote.

I use autovote a lot which works for me, although I've tweaked it down recently so I can do more manual voting.

Both of us earn LOTS of steem compared to the average BTW, we're probably both in the top few hundred of earners per post I imagine.

Maybe that's why Steem's stagnated - 500 accounts or so suck up most of the rewards, and outside of that it's pretty crap. We both remember what that's like.