You say to get to the top of the front page... "you have to produce excellent content or an excellent product."

That shouldn't have to be explained.

Yes, you can get to the top of the front page when submitting your own content. (I've done it multiple times, and with my domain name the same as my username, it's obvious it's my own content. Check my submission history.) What you did in your original post was game the system, which is a completely different story than just posting content that is not high quality.