I do try to look at this, even though sometimes it is demotivating. I have invested a half of year posting or commenting every day and build a follower base of over 600 people, but with only about 5 of them pretty active. This gives me 0.2 $ per post so anybody can see that I am not making this for money. I've never powered down anything and also I have sent to bittrex 30 Steem just to see how these things work.
Sometimes I am writing because I feel that I have interesting things to share and other times I do it maybe from loneliness :))
I guess I would be satisfied if I had a lot of followers to read my articles and share their opinions, but at least I have a few that are active and who are really good people. It is better to have fewer followers that really care for you than to have a lot that are not interested :)
How is your witness node going?
Thanks for asking. Its slowly getting up there. I'm quite happy on where it has gone in ranking over the last 5 days. Still a long road though and a lot of work. Getting votes is not easy.