When I started in Aug 2016 it was normal to get 0 payout on many posts. Sometimes with 20 or more votes. (It seems we had more activity then)
However, like what you said, I would occasionally get a whale vote. I remember specifically receiving some from BlockTrades, a few from the Curie project and twice from Bernie when the account was huge, and I know there were likely a few others.
I agree, the difficulty level is different now. For a while I gave up and I just posted some not very good content just to put something out.
I think everyone figured out that whether you are giving a vote or money, you are parting with an asset when you vote for others. This is the same problem many sites that have tried to reward content have run into.
It's a challenge, we will see how it turns out.
Well I think as long as people keep being selfish with their assets then we are not going to see that upward momentum happen to the Steem price that we're all hoping for. I've been running a few tests lately to see what kinds of payments people with higher SP give for full page comments, and I'm getting mostly 1% and even $0.01 replies if anything. A fool and his money are soon parted but when it comes to Steem you have to be a fool not to be encouraging the platform to work correctly by giving back to your audience. Also in case anyone reading this is curious you have to have at least a $0.03 vote to get a payout and not be rounded to $0.00.