If you are struggling with upvotes, try to get traffic to your steemit-article via other sources, like google (SEO), youtube, forums, Facebook, your own website,...
I think later when many people have a steemit-account you will get much more upvotes than now. It`s still Beta and only a few people have a steemit-account, but the userbase is growing very fast.
https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=steemit