There is a saying that content is king however there are many people with tons of articles that are making less than a $1 per post. Some of the top steemit posters have YouTube channels and twitter's where they promote their content and help to bring new users to steemit. Every so often you'll see a success story from someone who made a single post and then earned $1k or more however I think of these post as fools gold. Sometimes it's about posting at the right time or posting a topic that their was a large market for that had gone unaddressed. Sometimes it's also because it's very original. Rather than trying to figure out what the magic combination of or formula is, I think it's much easier and much more rewarding to just focus on posting articles on topics you find interesting, and have some knowledge or insight into.