I agree that the money aspect is sometimes distracting instead of a helping factor. I think it's in our culture to become greedy, and this causes is sometimes to make the wrong decisions.

A while back I decided I want to focus on the programming community on Steemit, so I try to interact (upvote and comment) on as many good or interesting programming posts I can find. I'd rather have 100 followers who are programmers than 1000 who aren't.

But still, every once in a while I'm tempted to follow people or engage with posts because I think they will earn me profit, instead of being actual quality posts. The money is an incentive to keep posting (and to keep developing @spectacles, as @firepower mentioned) but it's also a constant devil on my shoulder telling me "if you do x you might earn more money".

I guess what I can take away from this all is that I recognize my own greed, so I can make a deliberate choice to not succumb to it. But it's a constant battle. It's in our nature, I guess.