Hi, I've read this series of posts with interest, and I have brainstormed a suggestion for you to consider. Maybe you could move your investor's rewards from author rewards to beneficiary rewards, and thus remove the need for investors to post regularly in exchange for (pseudo) passive revenue.

One possibility that occurs to me is this:

1. You find some bloggers who are already posting appealing content on other platforms like Medium or Wordpress or Blogger.
2. You offer to help them syndicate (mirror) their content on the Steem chain.
3. They continue posting as normal, and you post a copy of their blogs here, too.
4. In each post, the original author gets 10% (or some percent TBD) of your upvote, and they agree to share the remainder of the rewards with investors.
5. In the post, you assign beneficiary settings to your investors in a "proof of stake"/PPS style rotation.
6. If authors also agree to post #steemexclusive content, they get a higher share of rewards.

In all, I think everyone benefits.

• Steem gets more authors, more appealing content, and less vacuous content
• The authors that you bring in get a bigger audience and more returns for work that they're already doing anyway.
• upvu might earn more in curation rewards because more attractive content could also receive organic upvotes
• Investors can get true passive income without needing to burn time and effort on a daily (or even weekly) post just to serve as a place to send their rewards.

Obviously, it's not a fully formed idea, but maybe it will be a productive starting point for your consideration.