As to posting the most important thing is to post every day, and to post with consistent quality every day, that way people know what to expect of your post.

As to upvotes that is always individual, and many people including me is doing that manually, which also means that the time of when you post can be important, plus also what times people are around to upvote.

That being said, what you earn on your posts is also influenced by your own stake, big whales like to see that you are at least not unstaking your Hive and selling all of it, you should be growing that stake or upvotes from big whales will not happen very often.

In addition to staking you also earn curation rewards when upvoting, this accounts for 50% of all earnings, if you are not using that then you are leaving money on the table.

I hope this helps, and stay !ALIVE