When I first found out about Steemit, I was fascinated by the idea of earning crypto for my content. I joined Steemit 11 months ago hoping to earn some extra income. I invested a little bit to increase my steem power because it seemed like the best thing to do, increase steem power, increase voting power and earn more in curation rewards.

No sooner had I done that, did I realize that things were not all that simple. One needs a tonne of Steem to earn curation rewards. After a few posts without any real earnings, I almost quit. Luckily, there was a good-hearted dolphin who started regularly upvoting my posts and that gave me the boost in confidence that I needed to push on. I increased my steem power and thereafter discovered voting bots like minnowbooster.

I started using those on a regular basis until they stopped being profitable. Steem started losing value and at that moment I also discovered other ventures which seemed to have better returns so I lost almost all interest in Steemit. I started taking out money and investing in other projects. I came back again recently and I discovered contests and that's the only thing that's keeping me here right now because all this thing about writing quality posts and the community will reward you, it's all an illusion. Here if you want to be noticed, you need to do a whole lot more than write quality content.
I have dozens of posts which are 100% original, each post is more than 1200 words and it took me more than 5 hours to write, but the only votes I have on those posts are from free voting bots like minnow support. I have over 1700 followers but my posts don't get more than 20 views.

The only posts that seem to make it to the trending these days are for those that can afford to buy huge votes from bots. I tried it on one post, it was trending on the tags I had used, got hundreds of upvotes, but due to inflation I actually made a loss on that post. Most of the voters were worth zero.
I'm considering putting in more money to buy bigger votes but I'm not sure if it's gonna be worth it. I don't know if I will turn a profit or not. Perhaps since you have done it you can tell me if it's worth it or not. It seems like a very risky move because you will most likely get haters who will downvote you and poof goes your investment. Some people have quit Steemit because of such reasons.