It appears that without posts benefitting from bidbots, the way to large rewards on the Steem blockchain is to have a lot of whales as followers. Most of the posts listed here aren't very good, interesting, or useful. They're just random shitposts, upvoted by whales.
The quality posts on Steem are the ones with the lowest rewards. The worst posts on Steem are the ones with the highest rewards.
The site is an animal farm (the exact opposite of what it set out to be).