Yep - I've seen lots of people who have started after me, but seem to get to a high degree of success in a short time.

Oftentimes though, they have put a lot of real money into it (fair enough) or they have been buying votes the whole way through - or they were simply lucky to find a whale to help support them early on.

My strategy has been like yours, simply to produce regular, high-quality content and let people discover me! Discord has made a huge difference there, I must say - as well as some of the minnow initiatives such as newbieresteemday and payitforward.