Thank you for the useful info. That's a lot of effort to do it organically.

My article originally added a section on buying resteems from bots, but I thought it would confuse readers who are already struggling with the concept of Steemit itself. I've used bots twice to promote articles - this was one of the two - as an experiment comparing approaches. In both instances I have presently made less than I sent them. At least this one received some votes at all - the other one didn't. Our best performing article so far was around $40, which had dozens of comments and was very useful in the technology space - I'm not seeing much love for our better writing, life, stories, blogs, even our music features - a few bucks apiece. I know Steemit is a rung on the ladder of next gen Internet innovation, so I see it all as learning at the moment, helping me gain ideas for our own applications.