totally and 100% agree with you whatever you said in this post , i was also a victim of the same thing means in the begning i was worked for hours and hours on steemit and make posts with my level best and always think that people will give tons of votes after my publish on steemit but the result was 360degrees in reverse mood always , i never get upvotes and just cents recieved in payout by those posts than i came to realize ,

that whatever im doing so far was wrong this is not the whole thing that im doing here on steemit writing a good content is always good but by just posting a good content on steemit and wish to get good votes is just a fairy tail , as you said in your post that its a half war to create content just and wish to get upvotes,
so i realized that this is not enough and i started to interact with people on steemit and i read posts of my favorite topics and interests on steemit and started to give my level best on those posts and interacting with people on steemit ,
but one thing i mentioned here i never ever begg in comments for upvotes i just give my feed back to people about their posts by reading their posts and extract the pupl of their posts and summerize them in my comments this is what my strategy is ,
and beleive me now people like me and they always like my content also with even a single request because i think its nothing without jumping in to the pool and in the same way we have to jump in the community and make the people aware about us and make them and feel them our existance on steemit so that they will look on to our posts other wise as you said it will be a waste of time , i my self totally agree with your thoughts in this posts because im already doing the same that you are talking about in this posts, by the thanks for your advises in this great post , hope you are fine and healthy , stem-on and aware us more and more about how to run on steemit, thanks