I have been talking about this a lot lately! Everyone keeps pushing this idea that we have to rely on the community for votes, but the reality is that if you aren't getting a major payout from a whale or a delegated app like DTube, you aren't really making anything. I have watched two users on here in particular that have 2k and 3k followers respectively, and they rely seemingly on 1-2 upvotes for their 80-100 dollar daily payout. On days when that whale hasn't upvoted them yet, their posts sit at about $3. If that whale ever left them, they would be screwed, and I think a lot of people are in this position! I am too. I only get heavy upvotes because of DTube and a very kind, dolphin I guess? I realize that it's only a matter of time before YouTubers come in and start sucking all of the DTube delegation dry, and that dolphin probably won't support me forever, so I have been trying to get a real following, but there are two problems with this:

1.) Even if you have an awesome following that really love you, most people's upvotes, especially in the beginning are only worth a few cents. You would have to have tens of thousands of followers to get anywhere.

2.) A lot of the followers you do have are most likely inactive. A lot of people start on here excited, and following different people, and then get discouraged and leave.It's hard to tell how many of your followers are inactive unless you go through them all manually. This isn't just a problem with Steemit though. It's the same on Facebook. I think of the George Takei page I follow, and while he has a following of like 15 million, he only gets a few thousand likes and just a few hundred comments on each post. You'd probably see a similar phenomenon on YouTube. What makes YouTube more ideal however, is the only thing someone needs to do is *watch* your video for you to make money. They don't have to decide whether to use their SP to upvote you. They don't have to leave you a comment to make your post any more visible.

I love Steemit so much, and I am busting ass to try to claw my way into a stable position so I can help others. Right now I feel as though I am on a floating door in the waters of the Titanic crash, and I can hardly help anyone from my current position. I need to move up to a boat. The move up to a boat here though is nearly impossible now unless you put your own money into the system. I am, like you, failing to see how my investment into Steem will compound and grow, frankly because I imagine for Steem to stabilize, it will tether itself to the value of USD 1:1.  I could be wrong there, but as I see it there are only two choices: Steem is always crazy volatile and no one can really use it because it's all over the place, but we as Steemians can still make money on its peaks, or Steem stabilizes and drops back down to being worth a buck, and we never make any "investment" on it. The "investment" talk is coming from people who think Steem has the capacity to be the next LTC or BTC but I don't think that's possible. The system is set up too differently, and it's too easy to get new Steem.

Well that's my rambling for the day. I would set up autovote, but my SP is so small, it wouldn't make a huge difference in anyone's posts! I haven't been on here as long as you, but I do understand where you are coming from!