As a fulltime-Steemian for a year I can tell you with certainty that the earnings here are very real! But forget the trending page and hot page because there you will find 95% posts that have been promoted with bots. A better way to find good content is search for specific topics and then follow those authors and check out their networks. It is not very intuitive but a much better solution than looking at those posts on trending. And a high reputation means that these people MUST have gotten some very good payouts over time. Just because some of them got low payouts recently doesn't mean they didn't had better times before.

But don't let yourself fool you: You can make some good money here and this might be the best investment of your time. Grow your account and accumulate Steem power.