I have yet to make the big comment pay-outs like some of your examples, but I am learning how to do better.

I would like to add my two cents to the upsteeming your own comment, and how important that can be.

On an unrelated post, I asked a question to the OP. My comment came in 8 minutes after the post. I did not upvote it. A different user commented the same question about 3 minutes after I did. He upsteemed his own comment.

The original poster saw his comment, acknowledged it, upsteemed it, and the two of them interacted for awhile. It netted the comment around $4. My comment sat in the background and did not generate any $. Lesson learned :)