so I might as well atleast get a few coins for myself for atleast my daily basic expenses.
It's on you to decide if your self-vote is worth more or an upvote from my side. As you can see, many people who are commenting here earned quite some cents: I upvoted them all, because they upvoted me, too, even if it was just a symbolic gesture. You may test that 'mechanism' in one of my following articles. :)
Frankly I respect you for that and thank you on everyones behalf for doing so, but not everyone here is so generous to give away so much. I appreciate that I really do, but you can't expect me to comment on someone's post without liking it right? Not gonna feed them bullshit lies just to a small petty upvote from them. Do you get what I mean?
I would never expect anybody to upvote my articles in case he doesn't like them. However, if he likes them, then I see no reason not to upvote them as well (that's how Steemit is designed to work).
And of course in general you shouldn't upvote articles you don't like just to get upvotes in return. Instead of that just upvote articles which you like ... then you can enjoy receiving upvotes in return without feeling 'guilty'. :-)