In old days on the previous blockchain (St**mit), there used to be so-called bidbots. They were bits where you made a payment and the bot would return an upvote to your post or comment ( or to a friend’s). It was clean and pure capitalism. You got a vote worth more than your bid, and the person who owned the bot got your payment plus the curation reward for the upvote.
Now some folks thought it was an abuse of sorts. Too much of a drain on the rewards pool and not in keeping with the original intent of the manual curation of worthy posts. While true some inferior posts did get upvotes, it also tended to reward some posts that would not necessarily receive the attention of folks with large voting power.
Now what do you imagine happened to the people no longer able to sell their votes to earn income? Why they just made other alternatives to earn that income. Curation bots that followed subjects or members to upvote. No bid is exchanged but there is the curation reward.
Earning rewards in other ways
As a small fish I find my upvotes not worth too much sometimes. I can use the dustsweeper service. You send some Hive and dustsweeper will upvote your post if it is below .02 Hive up to .02. This is so you do not lose the small upvotes you may get.
There are communities you could also join to reap some upvotes. You could join LeoFinance if you can write financial and be exposed to upvotes. You could join Hivegaming or Splinterlands to get exposure.
You could also set up a beneficiary that might bring other upvoters to you. For instance, I use reward.app. It essentially coverts your rewards to liquid HBD or Hive, but will bring other upvoters who also want to earn those liquid rewards.
I hope this has given you some food for thought on how to increase your rewards. I am still researching to find other ways to get upvotes myself. You should research your own ways yourself.