Hi again, @ats-david,

With more widespread distribution of SP, I can't foresee even the top posts ever breaking $100. This is just speculation, but I'd imagine that most of the top posts would be getting closer to $10.

Your comment makes it clear to me that I need to study and have a better understanding of the basic Steemit rewards algorithm...

In a "perfect world," I would imagine (he says, placing wishful thinking hat firmly on head now) that something like the following would be highly motivating to content creators:

• A Niche Market - Hundreds to Thousands of regular readers on an obscure but interesting topic
• A Big Following - Tens of Thousands to a Hundred Thousand regular readers on a popular topic
• A Viral Post - 100K to Tens of Millions of readers

Stipulating that the payout algorithms work as you've briefly described here and are headed downward, I can see people who write for a hobby, or simply for the joy of it coming and staying "on board." I can see them being quite happy with $100 slipping to $10 for a good post. I for one expect to stick around on a part-time basis and watch Steemit grow, while getting to know fellow authors and interested readers.

But what about people who write for a living? Columnists make ~$60k/year, and syndicated columnists can make between $4 and $35 per insertion per newspaper in which they are published. (SOURCE) Even with the decline of newspapers (about 13k in the US in 2014, down from about 18k in 1980 (SOURCE), that could mean really big $$ for the top columnists like Dave Barry, etc.

It seems to me that excellent content is necessary to attract a huge readership, and that outstanding writers are needed to create that content. How will the prospect of small diminishing to trivial payouts attract and keep the best writers? Particularly those who write as a vocation, devoting all their time to the work?

IMHO, the payout algorithm needs to have a better correlation with the actual readership in the long run. Especially for the regular "Big Following" and the once-in-a-blue-moon "Viral Post" cases.

Thanks in advance for any corrective comments any of you may have for my understanding. ;)