It largely depends. Honestly I'm not here particularly for the money, anything that comes in I'll end up using as either a means for some sort of writing contest or powering up. My powering up would only serve to benefit those who write content I enjoyed reading or supporting the disabled writing about their disabilities. I'd like to use more bots to keep up but honestly, I've learned that where you and I are, unless we're shelling out some serious cash we're not catching up.
So the only thing we can do is just create our content for the sake of creating our content and just hope that our content is useful or entertaining to someone down the road without any compensation of any kind. I know it's a little disheartening and easily takes away encouragement, but honestly I enjoy writing and creating content, even if I'm not being paid for it.
I just wish it were easier for others to find. One of my other issues I take with Steemit is that tag spam isn't controlled. Garbage content floats to the top of all the tags. In order for your stuff to be hopefully seen by someone, you have to share to discord servers that have a self promotion topic and literally wait.
Sometimes a curation group like Curie will happen along your content too.
These kinds of concerns are the things driving me here. I'm thinking about this all the time, you've said it well. Thanks.
Just have to chill and write for the sake of writing. I view Steemit very similar to how I view Facebook. All the popular, fake as hell people float to the top. :p