Hi everybody, hi @denmarkguy,
Thanks for publishing this interesting article.
Your post reassures me, as it's saying everything I feel is happening.

I'm on Steemit since 8 days now, trying to produce quality content each day and commenting / upvoting other quality content (as much as I can, maybe 2 to 5 posts / comments a day as I don't have time for much more). But it's really hard doing it all on natural growth. I went to 200 VESTS to 1400 thanks to some "whales" (0.1$ upvotes) but who unfortunately didn't leave comments. But It feels like I'm still so far away from having enough SP to give 0.01$ upvotes and finally feel like my votes are having an impact when upvoting posts and by that, authors I want to support.

I also made 3 or 4 real connections with other people, and we are now, reading, commenting and upvoting each other's posts (not with an explicitly stated rule but with each of them I know I won't lose my time reading their posts, I have a big chance to like their content and hence finishing by commenting and upvoting it). We're not a "club", I don't see these people doing the same between them.

I was originally embarking for a 3-month minimum journey at this rate, but you convinced me to prolong it to at least 6 months. I'm hoping it will accelerate if I continue to provide good content.

And to answer your questions at the end of your post : I knew it was going to be long and difficult to get a little base of "real" followers. What I didn't expect was the systematic use of upvote bots by the majority of "big" authors and all the fuss about curation strategy. Even genuinely upvoting good content becomes an economical decision.