I see a lot of people saying that you need to be the first to comment or get there before the votes come in. In my experience, I find that not true. If I take the time to tell a funny story, or write out a piece of advice or philosophy or whatever- if it's not total garbage I find I usually receive a vote from them, more often than not. 

I think you need to focus more on the quality of your questions/answers. Musing is manually curated so they look for quality answers. I've never seen a vague, short or unrelated answer with an upvote from musing. I think there's a lot of miscommunication with newcomers to the platform that seem to think that this is a platform where people are cast random votes for their use. 

It's not true. It's built on the Steemit blockchain, so consider the similarities. You need to actually provide meaningful information for someone to want to give it a good vote. The rewards are coming directly from the same pool and we all know that musing's goal is definitely not f--king that up. They aim to provide rewards for the users utilizing the platform the right way so that it has the ability to grow in the future. The size of the upvotes is supposed to be an encouragement factor for proper use- not a blind money-making tool. 

When using these platforms you have to remember that your individual use in some way or another influences the long-term success of it. If everyone were using musing and Steemit to their full potential STEEM would take the F--K OFF while the mass adoption came in. 

So, take some time to write some real thoughtful questions and responses. I saw a question earlier that simply said "What do you think?" and I think it's a good example of how not to use these platforms. 

This is nothing personal and was not written with you specifically in mind, of course. I am just guessing that if you have never received a vote it's because you are not putting your full effort into it. Get out there, find a question that you have some insight on, and tell em what ya think!

Hope this finds you well. Cheers :)