That's really impressive! I've joined steem in December 2017 and after just one month I had around 200 USD in my wallet just from commenting on other posts and interacting with people, just like you did, which seemed like a beautiful dream to me but back then I didn't know anything about crypto (almost same is now), but just wanted to find a place where people are interested to read and find more about my adventures. That made me meet lots of cool people that I'm really proud when I talk with and learned more things both about world, but about me too.
Steem it's a nice place, and I'm really hoping it will remain the same. I remember checking other posts from 2016 and they had around 45k USD on a single post. Like woot?! A single post. Imagine posting weekly, or even once every month! But from what I noticed almost none of them remained on the community, mostly cashed out and probably got a nice house on the beach, an expensive car and are travelling the world, lol. Nothing to complain about, we have only one life and everybody lives it the way he wants. But I may be naive that I still hope one day those times will return :)