Seeing this feels like we are a decentralized shit and that is why we are not able to sell ourselves. May be time has come where the community should set some standards for who can get how much vote based on their content quality. It could be a varied range, just to ensure that there is some community eye. And it could even be evaluated in phased manner. Otherwise this whole mindset of earning would break the vibes of decentralization.
Leo is working on something like that with their curation trail. You might want to follow their progress, there are 7 attributes they look for if I member right.