Sadly, many people aren't interested in putting in the time and effort to reap the eventual rewards. Take a look at some Steemit users that have been using the platform for a mere 6 months. Some of them are making a lot of money.

If you look at their profiles, however, you can see that they've spent a lot of time following people, gaining followers, making worthwhile comments, replying to people, upvoting and re-steeming content, and creating great posts. Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.