Its not a pyramid scheme although it does promote community building and can be skewed due to upvote weight. Probably what you want to do to get more upvotes is join some discord communities and promo there as well as on other social media. Additionally its a good idea to enter contests that you can find.
I use steemnow.com to track who upvotes me in a day how much my upvote is worth and what my rewards look like.
I also use steemvoter.com to put my fave users on an auto upvote list where i get to choose the % of the vote I get.
Keeping track of users on your feed CAN be hard and is a big complaint we all have 😃
I aldo reccomend commenting on posts you upvote if posdible for bonus exposure points.
That being said its not for everyone. And i certainly made fuck all my first year here. It took dedicating time to post consistently and upvote and community build.