If you look carefully at some of the very fast growing accounts on steemd ... You will notice a common theme... the fastest growing accounts buy most of the votes and then in turn delegate the return on the purchased votes to gain followers in mostly bot form.

The content of some of these fast growing accounts is rather questionable. However, once the herd gets going, the content is hardly even necessary. The worst purchased upvotes are for plagiarized content. That's just simply stealing from the payout pool... hurting all the little guys on the platform.

If you want to earn a little on Steemit, you either need to post every day or spend $$$ to buy a few hundred STEEM and work the various buildawhale networks. Otherwise, you'll be limited a few pennies here and there... which is fine if that's all you're after.