As I have reached the depth limit...

[I now commit that all of the SBD from this post will be divided equally and distributed among the first 30 up-voters]

This is why I will not upvote this post.

As you state in a comment, that you want to get an idea of what it takes:

Why don't you look and comment on the blogs of the users, who comment on your post ?
That's how you will find out, what it takes.
Follow the right people (steemstats.com helps a lot thx Hive account@jesta).

Work the tools, create.

Effort needs to count somewhere and I think that its pretty clear that I'm putting a lot of effort into this.

I'm putting a lot of effort into this - do you care ?
I think my blog is better than yours, why exactly would I upvote you ? :D

I'm only trying to help, please don't take offence.
But this is not school; Effort doesn't count for nothing, mate.