I think one of the things to consider with the time investment is compounding effort. If you are working for $2.50 an hour now, but build a following that includes a few whales, and in say six months of constantly putting good content out there on a daily basis, you build up enough of a reputation to be earning $100-$200 per post, or $800/day at $200/hour was making $2.50 per hour in the beginning worth it?

There is also the question of where the time you are spending on Steem came from. for me, the vast majority of the time I am spending on the platform was time I was using on Facebook or Twitter anyway, so my real value of that time was $0.00, so $2.50 per hour is certainly an increase from that rate of return.

Plus, what if reading and curating leads you to be one of the ICO investors in the next BitCoin, the sort of thing you will never get on Facebook.

I'm opting to look at this whole experience as an investment toward future growth. Some investments pay off, others do not. We'll see where on that spectrum Steem lands.