I don't know. In some way I understand your idea. And of corse personal upvoting is better than voting-bots. But isn't the idea behind Steemit to curate content? It is what you want to do. But you do it for money. I made a post today about friendship being more important than money. In fact I believe, if you make yourself some good friends here, you will grow anyway. But maybe I am just naive. I made my decision by now to be myself here. And I think I am more interested in making friends than in making money. I will give that a try. Maybe it will fail, then I will "just" have some new and interesting friends. Or maybe it will also work out financially.
My idea is that if we could financially support ourselves, doing what we were meant to do, we would be able to help more people be able to do what they love also. The reason I am charging money for the vote is because I have to lease the voting power from other users that are not using their voting power to vote. .Maybe they are just investors on the platform and do not create content or curate posts.In the end, this proably will not be profitable for me, but it will be profitable for those that receive the upvotes. They can then power up and pass the love down the line. I don't think it has to be a choice between Money vs Friends. Why can't it be both... I admire your ethics. I also belive that in time the money will come as long as you keep doing what you do.
Okay thank you. I see we have a similar opinion. Finding the middle or the best way seems to be a really challenging task on Steemit.