It's funny - I did a bidbot experiment a few months ago, and although I thought at the time that the bidbots were making me a profit, they were actually making me a significant overall loss. And during that time the few posts I published without using bidbots did much better than the bidbotted posts.
Not exactly a scientific experiment, but since then I've not only not used any bidbots, but I've barely given them a second thought. Re-other strategies - I think that community is the best one - making sure that your post gets attention from at least one group of Steemians who are likely to have an interest in that subject. And if there's no related community, why not start one up?
Not that I've got round to doing this - I think some of my posts would have received much more upvotes if I'd had the time to promote them more, but maybe I'm just not organised enough. And although not all of them earn as much as $1, most of them do, and if I averaged the earnings out I think it would amount more than that. I'm very happy with the state of play so far. I think bidbots take your attention away from the longer-term community building, learning and making new discoveries that is much more rewarding - that's my opinion anyway!