Hi, it does sound like you're taking the same path as I am, except I'm hardly a daily poster. No begging, original content and I'm ok with using Pixabay for finding pics I don't have myself. I haven't taken advantage of the upvote trails and services as I've been wanting to see how I do organically.

I'm really not that well known here...this place is huge...and I did a bit of research into @blocktrades when I saw that upvote was the one that put me on the trending pages of the hashtags I chose...seems to be an important part of the equation.

I honestly don't think he read my piece but it was more of my timing of posting while he was surfacing to let off some of his daily Steem...seems to do so a couple times a day and anyone around at the time gets the benefits.

I'm good with the idea of maybe getting some decent average of somewhere around $10 a post in a couple years time. I have much to learn but yeah...the spam and abuse of the daily reward pool has pretty much stunted my growth here...no body's fault but mine really. Original content doesn't come easy for me. So I've been spending most of my time reading up on the all the different perspectives regarding the scam/spams & flagging efforts.

Seems it's going to take changes in the algo of the platform to really put a dent on those abusing the system...and I don't necessarily mean gaming it...but imo greed can also hurt the impression people get when they come here. Just the negativity is so unpalatable. I know I'm not alone with this thinking and I also hear of people shying away...and there's so much more I don't see. :-/ I'm still hopeful things will shake out for the best in the long run.

I look forward to having a look at your blog...and thanks so much for the resteem and taking the time to share your thoughts here. ✌️

Keep on Steem'n on!