and relying on votes for income is a fickle business, as it will eventually shift, no matter what you produce, because people's tastes change or, something shinier takes their attention.
I saw some posts with big upvotes from something called appreciator. do you know how that works? is it a manual curation or only people who delegate hp to it are eligible for upvotes?
It is "manual" in as much as they vote the same accounts a lot. I don't know much about it, but they have massive delegations. I don't think I have ever got a vote from them :)