I've been here for 10 months and there are voting rings, in fact there have been many posts asking people to get together and vote for each other's posts, now I don't know if they work all right but they do exist, it isn't a conspiracy theory, now I'm not judging it, the platform is free, you think you can make money with a voting ring so be it. But to me the way to make money here is to tag along with a few whales and hope they will send a vote your way every so often. Unfortunately I have not made any whale friends, damn. Writing great articles is also a great way of making money here, but that one is more difficult, I am now writing at least one article a day and I'm still getting pennies per article, but at least I'm getting them on a daily basis. I make more curating.