I did the Golden Nuggets (before i saw the daily pics over a month ago) and i had this problem to so i changed the model and gave out 80% of sbd divided among the people i tried to lift. That post got less then all the others, maybe just bad luck and that issue was bad but i kinda lost a little steem. was about to do another one then a saw the hidden gems on the first page with like 1800$, just linking to stuff and taking all the earnings, and including authors that already are really popular etc.
And like you say, not enough votes gets to the posts themselves. They are good though so not to complain! When he starts sharing the sbd he'll be a hero...