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Your upvote is a reflection of your accumulated Steem Power and your reputation score. I'd argue that with your upvote being negligible right now, you have a greater incentive to upvote because you don't have to worry about parsing your voting power. Upvotes increase visibility of posts, even if your individual vote doesn't increase the payout. It's a disincentive to creating a spam bots that hold the same voting power as content creators and curators, who actually earn a stake in the platform and thus a greater impact when voting.

Give it time. You'll get there :)

Excuse me if it's a noob question, but you said "Upvotes increase the visibility of posts."
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This snapshot of trending proves it's not strictly payout that orders the list. Neither is it upvotes. Perhaps a combination of the two? Could someone tell me what the actual formula is that determines what stays on the top of 'Trending'?

Trending posts are the ones that have consistently the most user engagement (upvotes and comments). Naturally, more upvotes will increase the payout (as well as the likelihood of a large payout), so it tends to go hand in hand with a large payout. If you noticed, the number of replies for each topic is extremely high. It's a combination of factors. I did a quick search and didn't find any satisfactory articles that covered the specific algorithm that determines it, but you could try the help desk on Steemit.chat and see if you can get some answers there. I honestly don't know, otherwise I'd just tell you lol

Hey, thanks for trying. If I find it I'll post back here to let you know.

Thanks for the reply.

I upvoted your reply....no penny for you! :)

The upvote is worth it for me, even if it doesn't net any monetary rewards. Thanks for yours! :D

Look Close at this comment folks! This guy represents 230,954 people on the last stats I saw! Pay attention!!!