For most people there are no shortcuts. Persistence pays off: blog consistently, comment honestly and thoughtfully (no stupid "nice post, followed" low content crap or sucking up), participate in the chat (not just spamming your links, but talk to people), get on steemspeak, etc. Those who have a lot of followers and upvotes either came in with a large social media presence or built it up here.

It will never seem fair that some people are on auto upvote bots and get lots of rewards for terrible posts while well thought out original content by you gets underappreciated, but just keep posting and think to yourself "this is more than I will make on any social media site or any other forum" and try not to get jealous of others.