The Problem with Steemit: Who is making the most money?

There is a problem I believe inherently in the Steemit community; it is a contradiction I believe in the philosophy of this website, which is to reward useful and creative content to the value it is inherently and not based upon the author’s platform or fame. Basically, I think we can agree steemit is for the little guy to get his name out there, write what he or she loves to and get rewarded based on the quality and usefulness of their contributions.

Unfortunately it seems people with name recognition who join Steemit are being rewarded highly just for being on. They are getting money thrown at them it seems just for cross-promoting content they would normally post for free (and already do) elsewhere. In some instances this is a good thing; they are getting rewarded for value they provide where they otherwise were not (or not directly) but in reality, we can construe this to say they are ‘leeching’ the increased demand/investment into Steem by stealing lots of that newly created value people see in this platform.

EXAMPLE 1: Jeff Berwick & Dollar Vigilante

Jeff (or his company’s) first post netted him $16,000.

Yes, you read that right. Sixteen thousand dollars

And of course he bragged about it in a video interview about steemit. Of course, his bragging is a good thing. He spread awareness of Steem & Steemit and actually made the point in his video that the Steemit community likely voted him up (read gave him so much money) because he has such a big “Off-Steemit” platform that he would likely do a video/interview like this to talk about how much he made.

Later his 2nd post which WAS the video of him bragging about his first post’s earnings netted him another $9,500. His 3rd post was $5,500, 4th was $7,200 and 5th got him $3,200.

In total, not long after his account creation 8 months ago Jeff and/or his company earned somewhere around $100,000 on this platform!

Capitalism? Please post in the comments what you think about big name (and multi-millionaire) Jeff Berwick earning this high reward for posting on steemit.

EXAMPLE 2: Roger Ver

Roger only has 4 posts and has been losing credibility lately for continued support of a hard fork to increase the blocksize. BUT he made $7,700 on his second post.

See for yourself
https://steemit.com/@rogerkver

*Please submit examples below in comments of highly paid (pre-Steemit) celebrities.

There is a lot of good stuff like tutorials on how to bank your own fortune and seeing people like this woman making hundreds on here.

I will definitely look more into it, because so far I think rewards are skewed toward branding popularity and catchy titles, same problem reddit has with headline links.