It seems like SteemIt is going to reduce awards if you post more than 4 articles per day, i believe that they want to reduce the amount of content published in an attemp to have more qualitative content.
The whales don't have enough time to review all the posts and they haven't yet found enough dolphins to do so. Very good posts are not being rewarded because they are drowned in enormous quantities of useless content posted by "make a quick buck" users.
What you should do now ?
Post less, try to post only qualitative content, make your posts longer, include photos in all your posts, if possible photos that you've taken yourself and not stock photos. Try to post articles that are not avalaible on other sites.
Work on your title
The title is the first that thing people will see about your post, try to use some clickbait technics but don't deceive your users, the content should reflect exactly what your title is about.
Don't try to look too good
People are trying to look too good, and it's too obvious that they are trying to extract some wealth from SteemIt. An example is the numerous posts about visit cards targeting whales, those posts are useless and it's obvious that the author tried to extract rewards by doing it. The author posted 3 topics trying to extract up votes 3 times, on his last attemp he targeted whales :
https://steemit.com/steemit/@rkpl/update-business-card-steemit-for-users-psd
https://steemit.com/steemit/@rkpl/update2-business-card-steemit-for-users-source-psd
https://steemit.com/steemit/@rkpl/update3-business-card-steemit-for-users-version-for-whales-source-psd
If your project is too big and you haven't done anything yet, don't post it until it's finished or very advanced
Another example is about people having big projects but nothing is done yet, this kind of posts won't be rewarded because you haven't done much yet and it seem obvious that you are trying to extract wealth from SteemIt. An example is the steem debit card :
Don't follow the crowd
This one is less obvious, but i believe the whales will soon get tired of people posting the same kind of posts over and over again. Try to be original, try to do something totally new and you will get noticed.
Be yourself, add personality inside your posts
Whales don't want to reward anonymous people even if their posts are qualitative, they want to see who you are.
I'm posting this message from Starbucks, in Bangkok.
Good luck to everyone.