RE: Why your income is less than half after HF21
You can see the glass half full or empty .. the fact is without the HF ... smartsteem would not have been curating and that almost $8 upvote would not have arrived. To get that vote from them you would have needed to have bought a vote. Instead it arrived because they curated your post.
So, you are better off than you would have been. That is the reason the post was your 2nd best. I was not a supporter of the HF but there are some positives being seen and as much as you are not happy and wanted more. You are ahead of where you would have been. There is a couple of other votes there that I believe are the result of new curation efforts but they are not as certain as the smartsteem vote.
So let's take your 11.54-7.92 from Smartsteem and take 75% of the remainder -- you get 2.71.
How is your income less than half of pre-HF21 when pre-HF21 would have given you much less.
Now, having established that you did indeed get more than would have pre-HF21. There does seem to be something odd with the amount of Steem you received. Even though the reward is paid out based on a 3 day average, it appears that average would have needed to have been about 21cents and we know that is not the case.
I would suggest you ask one of the more technical witnesses like drakos or themarkymark to have a look at the payout and see if they can explain how it came out as it did.
You see @shadowspub that is the problem, the main idea behind 50/50 curation rewards was that everyone would now be eager to curate because now the reward is 50%, and yet what we have are curation projects like @smartsteem so a few people can feel that things are looking up. Now, how many people get a SmartSteem vote? Mighty few, the rest of us are getting hit really hard. @Smartsteem is just there so you can point to it and say"Things are looking up', they aren't for most of us, yet the people who backed the hardfork just don't want to accept this. And I am not even getting into the reward curve.
I've praised smartsteem for their change greatly in several places (although to be honest, it was selfishly motivated, as they will do better this way than they would have if they kept doing what they'd been doing). Yes, I benefited, but I've also lost most of my creator rewards elsewhere. I keep track of my income and growth here (currently on week 77) and will soon be able to show what outcome HF21 had on my team's finances. The damage done by HF20 was obvious, subjectively and in the data.
Non-scientific yadda yadda I know, but you won't convince me it was all a coincidence. Sooooo, your optimism is wonderful, but since I don't have much SP (3000ish) I'm nowhere near being in the newsteem club.
I realize that (and have been posting about) the shocks to the economy haven't all shaken out yet, and things are still adjusting. Who knows what could happen next? An entire industry (say bitbots) could collapse, and massive amounts of money could move away from the blockchain, or into some other projects, etc etc. Public opinion can shift. People can get tired of things they first enjoyed. Who knows what will happen over the next few weeks? Wildcard. And yes, wildcard's leave room for optimism.