I hear you. I think it's hard(read expensive) to get a lot of people to pay attention to a product or service, but I think it's even harder to get them back once they've had a bad experience.

Unfortunately, I think that's where Steem is at right now. Overall, it's a bad experience, that's why we have trouble retaining users. I think you and everyone else whose stuck it out can attest to this.

Of course I'm someone very bullish about Steem, so this isn't meant to be a Steem sucks sort of sentiment. I think there are a lot of great improvements being made, it's getting there, but if it were up to me(it's not, lol) I wouldn't spend money on advertising yet, and to be clear, that's primarily what I'm talking about. Us spending resources to market right now. I think it would be a poor use of our very limited funds in the current state of things.