I have just made one year on Steemit and I agree with you 100%. When I first joined I had no idea of what to expect and just thought I would throw together some content and make some money. It wasn't until I took time to write my posts and add some quality content that people started to engage. This also goes with commenting. I always try to comment with something valuable to the post. One quality post is better then 10 copy and paste crap!