![image.png](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmZxmSyoTWPKeJhoaKtUBsHV35ZQ22wfkLoaCoEb17gjDv)


Well I just read the post by @steemitblog and now they are stressing the fact that they are now targeting communities and SMT at 100%. This is great, but wasn't that said nearly two years ago? Well perhaps they mean it this time.

The main idea of the post is that these tools will be used to onboard people, now I really wonder if this will happen. I know that steem-engine has generated a lot of excitement and a lot of posts but has it onboarded people? I really don't have any numbers but I don't think it has, and the only way it will is if people start to make decent money there.

Because you see, the most important reason you can give for onboarding people is if you bait them with the idea that they can make money and you can only keep these people onboard if they actually make money, otherwise they leave. Yes, you will find people who will stay regardless of this, perhaps because they like the place, because they make friends or maybe like me I am an obstinate person and I have this idea I will someday make it big here, even though up to now it has been not so good and I am going to be three years here in August.

Now I think everyone can agree that the huge majority of people signup on Steemit with the idea of making money. But can you really make money on Steemit? And I mean enough money to live on. Unfortunately the answer is no, nobody here on Steemit can make a living by honestly writing a good article and getting a lot of votes because of the quality of their posts. Now I know there are some people who are in circle jerks who upvote each others articles and comments every day and they get a decent return every day, but if you notice most of these guys are from developed countries and they might make $20.00 a day it still is not enough for them to live off of.

The reward pool is finite, every day it rewards a certain amount of money and nothing more, if you onboard one million people and the reward pool is $50,000.00 I really don't think the majority of these users will stay here because they will be making nothing, the only way this would work is if Steem's price went up with every ten thousand new users, and if people stopped circle jerking, using bidbots even curation trails should end have everyone curate manually, but I don't see that happening. In fact I have been thinking about why not eliminate SBD's and just leave Steem, after all it is a very stable coin hardly moving from $0.25.

I am Ok with these ideas , communities and SMT's and even onboarding its just that after three years of the same thing one gets to become kind of pessimistic about things.