I did say "if" they spent next to nothing. That making "hard dollars" is true for most of us and if no one buys Steem it doesn't matter how much time they spent on it. I took the same risk cutting a record back in the 80's, if no one had bought it, I would be out the money for the time it took to write and rehearse the material, studio time, mastering, and printing. That's the way it works. If they could've made more money doing something else; why didn't they?
BTW, how do you even function on just 11SP?