guest posts, paid posts, paid links and so on and so forth (not to mention ads that are paid after 30-60 days)

Agreed, but there is a certain amount of urgency in this platform also because your earnings have to fit into a very short window - in a month any traffic you get will not pay out (though you can hope the person who finds you is also a Steemit user and becomes a follower - vast majority of the world does not know this site exists).

maintain a community

That is still my hope, will stick at it :)

Thanks for the heads up on FB about this post

Would be good if there was a feed or opt-in alert built in so that you would be immediately pinged on these things but as a substitute it seems to have worked this time ;)