Great post! It's really encouraging on not to give up and have the right approach to build a good comunity! This should be our main goal, and we could also have the RIGHT expetations on incomes then. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Edit: I forgotted to underline what you said: we could spend ours on other blogging plattforms or socials, without making A CENT if you don't invest a lot. Steemit is actually one of the few (or only one) that permits to really raise something, even it could be a little.