I know a solution that many people won't like but i think it's not that bad after all. When there are ads shown on this platform that would definitely generate a lot of income since this website is ranked in the top 100,000 most popular websites in the world. And most posts are about finance which generates more ad revenue. They can pay the users with the income from the ads. I know it's sometimes annoying to see ads online but the users would make money themselves since the inflation will be less. Or maybe do some kind of hybrid model where they print steem and show ads to pay the user rewards.

Normally the promoted posts should earn money but the problem is almost nobody is using that feature since it's more lucrative to use upvote bots. When you promote your post you lose the money you spend on the promotion. With upvote bots you earn the upvote - curating rewards and money spend on upvoting service. So you can break-even or even make money when using upvote bots.