I think the best way to answer your question would be to put forth a couple of questions to you.
Firstly; do you know what curation rewards are?
-and secondly; are you aware that many whales continue to receive curation rewards for selling their voting power?
Yes, my friend. The system has been rigged. They have taken the fruit that used to grow freely on these trees, and they have demanded we pay a price if we want to eat. That price can be paid in many currencies though. You can pay for your earnings with your earnings, making the beast stronger, and your opportunity to earn freely weaker with each purchased upvote. You can also throw away your self-respect and kiss some arse if you are desperate enough for some higher numbers to appear on your screen when you look at your "wallet." You might even do well simply by adopting an overly-nice persona and pretending to love every other person's writing on the platform- even when it's shit.
But if your intention is to earn a lot cryptocurrency here, simply by being yourself, then you had better hope that one of the aforementioned qualities lies within your repertoire. It would be wiser, in my opinion, to look past STEEM and SBD and unto the greater rewards that Steemit still has to offer at this point. You will find many great minds here, though they are becoming harder to observe amidst the spam most people refer to as content. Nevertheless that community of forward-thinkers still lives here, and their presence provides the opportunity to collaborate on something bigger than you or anybody else.
This platform is not for the people as it was advertised. That should be abundantly clear at this point. But, one shouldn't overlook that it has drawn a large percentage of those on this Earth who are for the people together. With those minds comes the potential for greatness, and the realisation of that greatness is the only reward we should worry about not earning during our time on this platform together.
Welcome to Steemit. Also, you were advised to pay for your votes. Allow me to suggest you do not. It is only so difficult to earn because some whales have decided to stop voting fairly and instead sell their voting power, even though they were already earning plenty interest on the STEEM that they mined simply through curation rewards. They instead made the conscious decision to no longer support good content, but instead support paying customers, knowing that this would put some very hard working Steemians out of business, for lack of a better term.
These individuals have already decided that what you want does not matter, and what they want- more power- is all that does. So, remember that when you pay them that SBD or STEEM to upvote your post, they are going to turn that payment into more power for themselves, and the curation rewards too. You have seen what they have done with a lot of power. What are they doing to do when they have a lot more?