My pleasure @pennyroll, happy you got something out of it :) It is very random. If you have had 1 post really high and the rest low, it is probably because you were curated by the @curie team. The quality of the content I believe matters for long term followers but occasionally you might hit on something good that you can learn from.
I see you're a painter! That's great, you can join our SteemArtists! You've got some really great original paintings there and we'd love to help promote you to get the views your artwork deserves. If you're interested you can click the Steem Artists banner at the bottom of my post to find out more :)