There is so much positivity coming from your post and I love it. I agree with most of what you have written. I am the editor of Trip de Spider blog and it is the blog of eight man game development/short films studio.
We have been here only for two weeks and the platform is great. I believe that it is possible to go full time steemit and live from it (especially in our case because average salary in Croatia is around 1000$).
Joining smaller communities is also a great point. If you find right group for yourself, shortly you will start feeling at home there. I joined @thesteemengine and after a week I have made a few friends there and I spend few hours daily chatting in our discord and meeting more people.
We have made similar steps to those you have described. In past two weeks we joined at least 20 discord groups and left most of them as they were not our cut of the cake, engaged with others through over a hundred comments, and published ten posts on our blog. That has brought us close to 40 followers and our reputation rose to 40 in those two weeks. So from our short experience here I can confirm everything you have mentioned in your post.
When I heard of steemit I thought of it as just another platform for promotion. But now after two weeks I am a bit in love with steemit and all of us from the studio are here to stay. I feel similar vibe from your post and I wish you best of luck man. Keep on rocking!
Finally thank you for resteeming this post else I might have never stumbled upon it @enchantedspirit!
Now I am off to check out rest of your blog!
Welcome to Steemit @tripdespider! Awesome to hear that you guys made it on here. It definitely sounds like you are well on your way to finding your people and place on this platform.
I live in the USA so its a bit more of a lift to go full time here but I definitely noticed that this is an insanely incredible opportunity to those living elsewhere, like your hometown, phillipenes, or a variety of other areas.
So glad to hear that this post has helped. Wishing you all the very best!
Cheers!
axios