Yes, you can upvote your own posts. Really only valuable if you have the Steem power to make it worth while. What it can do though is when you upvote your comments, it will push them higher up and make them more likely to be read by other users. The ethics of it are iffy. I have flip flopped on it. I look at it like a way of taking profits from your investment. It is ways to extract that built value from your account.
You don't have to upvote every comment as you have a limited amount of voting power to use. You can view this by checking out this link https://www.steemnow.com/@tradergurl. I put your user name in to make it look up your account. It is a helpful tool to use.
The one think I make sure I do is respond to every comment, positive or negative. Now if it is spam or a "I follow you, you follow me", then I don't bother. But I make sure that I respond as much as I can to all comments just because I feel that is important. Now other might not think so, but I it is something that I have placed a priority on. Now saying that, I don't post a ton of content so it is easy for me to do and I don't have a ton of follower or Steem power so people are not commenting on my work just looking for upvotes and resteems. Mostly people comment because they have read my work so I want to make sure I acknowledge that.
Cool, thanks again man. To be honest I only came here for the social side, I don't think I'll be giving up my trading account just yet for my Steemit account, currently valued at $0.44 lol.
I trade 1hr charts normally and trying to move up to 4hr and Daily, so I have a lot of time on my hands and thought it'd be good to meet some more traders and maybe help some new ones to get started and not ripped off.
I've already 'questioned' some of the terrible advice given by a couple whales so probably not long before I start getting flagged and downvoted anyway :-)
It takes some time to grow a steemit account, it really does. You have a gift for writing and you have a lot of good information. I think you will be fine in the long run. As long as your content grows and provides value, your account will grow in power. I look forward to watching you grow.