I agree with @bigtom13 - I think the rewards will come, but meanwhile there is so much more I'm gaining from Steemit. New friends and connections all over the world, as you say, and I'm also getting a great education about this new exploding area of blockchain-based paid social media. I also have a blog with all my Steemit posts on it, and it's the most active blog I've ever produced. The thing with "conventional" blogs is they usually take at least a year or so to start building up, and for search engine algorithms to find them, and Steemit helps me keep at it consistently instead of getting fed up at having no subscribers.
As for the 50/50 or 100% SP - I would make it 80/20 or something, because if you run into a situation where you need to sell, you'd need 3 months to power down your SP. So in my opinion it's good to hold some more liquid Steem too.