My perspective is that people matters.

Yesterday I created my first post, an introduction, the introduction that I always wanted to post here.

I know Steem from the outside, as a trader and investor, for quite some time but as a user interacting with others - since yesterday.

My votes so far? Self upvote obviously. Because I've made myself a Dolphin. That makes $0.15-$0.20 per vote. That's easy but expensive part.

I also went to the steem.chat where I get plenty of help and support from total strangers. One of them happened to be an Orca and a fan of a good music. So a bit of luck resulted in a big fat vote which happened to be a majority of my pending payout.
I've met some Planktons and Minnows too and I value their upvotes as much. Same as I'm happy about those who in future will read and listen, without vote, but with few seconds of attention, a thought, a smile, a tear.

It's not about the money! Surely, it's better to have it than not, but honestly, you can get more by washing your neighbor's car. Easier, faster.

Steem seems to be great. Now I know more about it thanks to a brief interaction with random people, far away from the trending page.

Trending page on Steemit is what makes Steem looks bad. It's so bad that I don't want to go there, and I hesitated to signup for a long time.

It's bad because of you, who pay to put your post there even though people wouldn't vote for you that much. And it's bad because of me, who don't have idea how to make a better use of my Steem Power without spending long hours every day on a curation.

But I can promise that I will find a better solution.