It is quite simple and anyone can get a fair shake with a little effort.

1.  views have nothing at all to do with it.  forget the view number, its just a nicety.

2.  freshness.  the newer a save ID is the more likely it will get to front page.

3.  voting response time.  The sooner/faster a save gets voted the more likely it will get to front page.

4.  Promotion.  You can get your save to the top of the BY DATE page every 3 hours.  Just opening your save and reuploading at least 3 hours after the first upload.  keep doing this.  people will look at the top 3-5 BY DATE pages before becomeing distracted by one.  You want it to be yours.

5.  It failed to get noticed.  Soo, if your awesome save does not get votes, try again in a few days with a new name or version numbers or add a period or 2 or 3.  as long as its a new name it will have a new ID and be a FRESH save.  This is why I have "Hard Drive v2.11"  it was v2  but it failed to get noticed.  then v2.1  got downvoted immediately after uploading(haters).  I waited a couple days and saved as v2.11 and bingo.  the right audience at the right time.  It is my 3rd most voted save now (132 as this is written).  it would not have been without promotion.  this IS the work you do after bulding your save.  polititions do not get elected by running 1 commercial 1 time on 1 channel.  they would quickly get forgotten..

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again.  that's an old littany that most of you youngins have probably never even heard.

if after much effort of this kind and your save still does not get there.  wait at least 6 months before retrying a last time.  if it still does not go then the community absolutely does not like it for what ever reason, good, bad or ugly.  sometimes stuff just never becomes popular.  

this is where TPT really mimics real life.  there are soo many real life inventions and products that ultimately just bombed.  Black and decker has had a few doozies.  hand held powered scrub brush.  ever heard of it.  no, not surprised.  it was on the market less than a year and all advertising seased quickly.  I remember it because I was thinking of building a prototype of exactly that when it came out.  glad I never bothered.  so don't get discouraged.  make a new save.  in fact keep making saves while promoting your previous save.

6. staying on front page.  The only thing you can do to help a project stay on front page is to do good work.  if you spend some time watching front page you will see crap get voted up and then slide, quite quickly to the right and down and off the bottom right.  the FRESHNESS and VOTING TIME continue to have an impact.  you must get more votes to stick.  the more/faster it will move up the page.  less it will hover about the middle.  too few/slow and bye bye save.

We are all subject to the same rules.  it is exactly fair.