did he ever faced the challenge of not getting upvotes?

Yes, in the very early days of Steem it was a challenge to get upvotes even though there weren't many people around. There was no an established culture of voting and it was very random, but most votes were worth a lot because the people who had any stake were early miners and witnesses. Post rewards didn't pay out until July 4th 2016. So before that first post payout, anyone who was mostly posting didn't earn any STEEM Power. Despite some simple posts getting a lot of votes, that strategy didn't work well for me at the time and once I decided to bring some uniqueness into what I posted and put some thought and effort into it, I started to get more consistent upvotes.

It was a different situation then and even people who put a lot of thought and effort into unique posts don't necessarily get rewarded, but a lot of them tend to get more attention over time.