The problem isn't only with the curation rewards.
On steemit, the reward potential is huge but as the time goes and the community grows(and if the curation mentality won't change), the vast majority will have near 0 as a reward for months/years. Unless they have a friend with big Steem Power/followerbase, invest a lot of $$$ or get lucky and go viral somehow. If they don't? Most of the times the only way to grow is basically "fishing" for upvotes(example: a random "great info, nice post, thanks" comment), self-upvotes, bot upvotes for months. Honestly, it's quite impossible to compete with $100+ self/friend upvotes and old accounts, so trending page is not really possible. And if the reward is low, most people will skip. I've seen accounts with lots and lots of long, detailed and new content with $1-$2 posts. If the reward pool is really high(or people know that the author can give high upvotes)? Then anything is perceived as a lot better post and further votes + comments follow.
I'm no pro blogger, I don't take this 100% seriously but among the not so serious posts, I try to give more than simply repeating something like "Steem is the future of blockchain and will go to the moon" without any explanation(or even less than that) for daily $200-500 or even $1k rewards. I don't know how is that useful to anyone or worth a monthly salary.
People love contests and free SBDs and tv series too, I tried one with a 100% SBD reward prize. Paid some SBD to bots to have some exposure, nothing. Not a single submission or feedback, almost 0 views. That gives a glimpse how differently people perceive high(and how visible) vs low reward pool posts.
It take a lot of consistency and various approaches from many different angles. Unfortuntately, it is currently not possible to only focus on the blog part if one isn't interested in the community engagement part. I don't see that ending anytime soon.
The other thing many people struggling don't realise is that there is more to the platform than what is on the platform. there are lots of projects and a lot of relationship building that goes on in steemit.chat or discord channels. It is difficult to get the head around all the possibilities so many do not bother.
Many of the trending authors (I won't say all) have been here building the community in various ways for the last year and a half or so but, most of that is done behind the scenes.
It is possible for new authors to get decent returns but, it does take a hell of a lot of work unless luck steps in.
True, it's months of work for sure. Also what could work for new users is bringing followers from other platforms. For example, if someone has subscribers on youtube or facebook, that could give a kickstart here for sure.
Hmm, the steemit.chat/discord idea is good. That could help starting any new contest.
I havent a clue what all this means.
If i like something i upvote it.
Maybe im not doing this thing right. :●S