I just found your post via @dr-murat who has been a delegatee of mine for 2 months.
Thanks for that report, it's still eye-opening for an "old" user like me (being on Steemit for 16 months), but mostly because I have never made use of bidbots myself.
There are other ways to get your content read and upvoted. Specialising in science or community-related topics is one, commenting on known whales' posts and participating in contests and related activities is another one. All of this is managed by use of certain tags (the categories you enter at the end of a post). Most projects have Discord chats where posts can be submitted for curation. It's not about Steemit's Trending tab that much ...
It's not recommended to come along with high quality posts before building up a network of readers. Sounds strange but when I joined people were encouraged to comment a lot instead of posting much. The RC system has changed that - unlike before HF20 the new users lack the required RCs for real networking activities for a long time if they are not given a delegation soon. Which is why I supported @dr-murat this way (and some other users who quit though).
There are apps and other ways for auto-voting. These can help users to make use of their voting power in times of absence from Steemit.
Getting a name and real reputation on Steemit takes time and requires a lot of patience. And I suppose your content is not read better now either. ;o)