If it comes to contests, just follow the rules and after the contest expired winners will be announced. You can earn: Steem, SP (powered up.Steem), UVF (the more you have, the more automatic upvotes you receive in a comment or post), SBI works the same you just do not receive upvotes on comments. Next you can receive upvotes from a community or higher ranked Steemian and of course, one of the steem curator teams.
If one of the teams nominate you, this means SC01 will upvote one of your posts. This account can give higher upvotes than the SC teams.

There are options to earn but therefore you should be original, no double posting on other platforms, no AI, no plagiarism. Votes can also be taken away and if you continue or spam down votes can also be the result.