I am still new enough to remember the first 2 weeks. I recall that I had higher rewards from my comments than articles - these were upvotes to my comments so it relies on the grace of others. After a while the balance shifted so that I could concentrate more on articles. Remember that you can always repost your best early articles once you have more followers.
Please have a look at my blog, there are a number of articles to both help minnows and about the self-voting issue. Thanks