Of course getting whale votes means a lot more than getting upvotes from people without a stake. It is vested votes that count.
But anyone can get votes from whales by making content that is seen as valuable to the STEEM Blockchain, or that brings engagement to STEEM.
I didn't know that Davidpakman used bid bots, so you got that right. But it doesn't change the fact that you're wrong to say that all top bloggers use them.
Ok, not all, but most do. All of them are either a whale, have whale friends, or used bid bots. There will never be a post with over $500 without one of those things.
you acquire a "whale friend" by consistently posting quality content that a STEEM stakeholder sees as valuable to the platform. Many quality content creators on my list had no friends when they started out, then someone viewed their content and wanted to support them. As a result, they either get votes from them periodically or set automatically.
It doesn't require anything other than community engagement and persistence.
Anyways, as STEEM grows and more quality content creators join, the vested votes will have to be distributed more.