Further more, I want REAL relationships on here, not fake ones. I don’t want to be a whale one day and having minnows kissing my ass because I have money.

So why don't you make a real relationship with someone who thinks your content is worth their vote... Anyone who does a job others want will have their ass kissed one day.

It is slow growth if you go to the normal blog route

What other blog site than steemit has any kind of quick ramp up... nobody wants to read some rando's blog (even mine), you have to build a following.

flooded my posts and steemit with traffic, that won’t improve my posts revenue. Only upvotes by whales do. So regardless if I had a hundred minnows or a thousand all giving me 0.09 cents

A hundred minnows at 9 cents is 9$, a thousand is 90$, a hundred thousand is 900$, obvious the more traffic the btter... just because those numbers are unrealistic doesn't mean each minnow vote doesn't add up.