RE: What do you think about hot and trending posts ?
Most of the people who earn high rewards are backed by whales (that is people with tens of thousands or even over a million dollars invested into steem) I've invested only a single thousand dollars into steem and my upvote is worth about $0.10
There's no big secret to attracting these whales it's simply a matter of time, as long as you have what they're looking for and remain consistent.
I think the big problem with steemit is the masses and masses of people joining that do not want to invest in the platform financially... up votes from people who have not invested are basically worth nothing, you could have hundreds of up votes from users that have not invested and make no money at all, you could get one up vote from someone who has chosen to invest (whale) and make $100.
You can help yourself out a bit by using various strategies, boosters excetera but it all comes down to the whales...
You said as long as you have what they're looking for, what do you mean by that ? Do you know what are exactly looking for ?
Well whatever it is they're looking for I don't have it, so not sure myself, most of the money I plan to make through Steam will be by way of investment and I like posting just for fun.
So we have to keep doing that for fun till some whales will notice us, it's the only way to grow and it's funny. ☺
Yeah I'm just going to keep on going for fun with no expectations, or else it just gets stressful.
What makes it stressful is as you've pointed out there's no real reason that I can see that separates people who get the whales attention and those who don't just kind of a chance thing.
Obviously increasing the amount of time you spend on the platform commenting regular consistent posts increases your chances of getting a whale, but still just chance in my opinion.
For someone like me with a full-time job who can't be steeming all day long, I'm just going to try to put whatever money I can in steem as an investment.