I come back from time to time to see how steemit is doing. I was surprised to see whales and even witnesses (!) selling their votes. I knew they frequently upvoted their own posts, but this was a new twist. To be honest, if I returned to writing here, it would be tempting to buy some votes for a post withing the 3 days Grumpy suggests. It seems steemit is a money pit for whales but doesn't offer financial rewards to regular writers (unless they align with a whale). Maybe this will help.