@bit.curious I think steemit as become a platform where you have to belong to a community or know certain whale to make a reasonable payout from your very valuable content.
That alone is discouraging many minnows who have valuable content from posting it here in steemit.
Also the most annoying situation is when you post a good content a dolphin reads it, comments then he upvote his/her comment and who not even upvote you that made the post.

So steemit can be very hard for a minnow to get noticed. And the fact is the more u get noticed the more people benefits from your works.