RE: Most promoted posts aren't profitable
Not everyone looks at promotion in this way. @dollarvigilante almost always trends, has the most followers on steemit (2809), and still promotes his content, pricing everyone else out of the top spot. I can only assume he wants maximum coverage on each post to maximise its profit. He certainly doesn't need more eye-balls
I would suggest his solid rewards are not due to the promotion they are independent of it. He consistently got high rewards before the promotion feature was introduced. He still gets them. Not much has changed.
I suspect he just wants maximum exposure for himself, his personal brand, and the products that he sells, so in addition to rewards and trending, he pays to put his name on the top of promoted too. Good for him, I thank him and I hope for the sake of Steem's advertising revenue numbers that he continues.
From what I've heard @dollarvigilante brought a lot of users to steemit, which is great. If it sounded like I was judging him, I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. My point was that it doesn't appear he needs to promote his brand further, but you disagree and that's fine. What's difficult is we can only make assumptions. All of this is hard to prove either way.
For sure he doesn't need to, but he wants to. Even if it is nothing more than vanity (and I see him as a smarter businessman than that), he's still our customer as long as he's paying for promotion, and I thank him for it.
Interesting and important questions can certainly be asked if this is still a novelty that hasn't worn off yet and if therefore the future means less promotion revenue for the platform. (Of course more users -- in other words, more eyeballs -- could increase the value of promotion.) I really don't know, but it will be interesting to see what happens