well, the thing is, you have to keep putting out content and slowly you will build up a group of people that like what you write and those will vote for you.
I do use bots up to a point but this is with money earned here on the platform and I consider this a reinvestment
It gets easier if you get a bit more SP and the bigger the platform gets and the more steem is worth the harder it is going to get to earn more

but upvoting other content and making nice or thought out comments will usually get you an upvote. In the beginning I sometimes made more by commenting then by blogging