What I've learned after 2 weeks on Steemit. Ever wonder how people make real money here?

After two weeks I have a reputation score of 46

• I have made 16 posts (I would call them quality posts, but that's just me)
• I have 87 followers
• I am following 111 steemians

Umm, Nope it isn't that simple!
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To start with I converted 0.1 bitcoin to get steem power. I had around 180 SP
After a week, I was so into it, I converted another 0.3 btc into steem power.
At this point I have a bit over 900 steem power. (95% bought, not earned admittedly)

Those are my stats. I don't feel like they are particularly great, but not a bad two weeks.
What I can tell you is that it's not what I expected at all.

You see when I started Steemit, I expected to immediately be getting $25 for every post. I thought it was that easy because I saw so many crappy posts making hundreds of dollars. I had no idea about all the rigging and scamming going on in Steemit. Let's be honest, it's well documented. There are a lot of whales with dozens of accounts just upvoting themselves and their friends. It's not hard to find if you look for it.

Soon after posting a few posts I began to wonder what these other guys are doing to get so much money for their posts. It didn't take long to see that a lot of those $25 posts had paid a vote bot $24. It didn't take long until I was disenfranchised and wanted to quit the whole thing. The more I dug into it, the more fed up I was about what was going on. Not only did I think getting these results was impossible legitimately, but I also could barely find content that I wanted to read myself.

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Then I'd read about people who were posting good quality posts everyday and after several months they were getting traction and making a bit of money. I started figuring out how to find good posts to and people to follow. I was energized again figuring I can keep this up and see if I can get a following in a few months. I mean, I put a lot into my posts, not that I think they are spectacular, I just literally put a lot of time and effort into them. Therefore I was thinking, how long can I spend so many hours per day doing something that isn't giving me a return?

So, again I settled on the fact that I do really enjoy it, so I'll keep doing it. Maybe I won't spend so many hours a day on it. I think for me that's best and should hopefully keep me from getting disenfranchised with the results if I'm not working so hard for little notice. One thing I can say for sure, is that you need to be yourself and post and comment on the things that interest you in a way that feels natural to you. Just because you need to comment a lot and make web friends with a lot of people to succeed, doesn't mean you need to be out there acting like a marketing rep for yourself. You'll just feel even worse about yourself when it doesn't work. Just be genuine and you'll find your crowd. You have to believe that or you're wasting your time.

I believe I'm actually starting to get the hang of writing posts, although I admit my follower count isn't really growing as fast as I'd like. I've started getting more personal in my posts instead of just providing facts and information as I started out doing. I didn't think anyone would care to hear from me, I just figured they wanted useful and helpful facts and information. Now I think users want to be entertained and hopefully get some useful information while at it. At least that's starting to be my shtick.

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A few bits of info for the brand new Steemians...
Fist, everything you read about succeeding on Steemit is true. There are no shortcuts. Interacting with others is the only way to success. Finding interesting posts and commenting and upvoting is what grows your followers. All this is assuming you have quality posts, because you can't fake that. No one wants to follow you with crappy posts. So, if you are here to make quick money pumping crap into steemit, forget it. Unless you brought a literal million dollars worth of steem with you. In that case you could probably double it with a ton of work, but that's not what we're talking about here.

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Let's talk vote bots...
Buying votes is one of the first things I read about while trying to learn how to grow my following. As I read and understood it, not everyone liked them or agreed with them. But, there seemed to be a gray area that I was OK with. It was explained to me like a tip jar. Have you ever seen an empty tip jar? Probably not. That's because its a proven fact that people aren't as likely to put money in an empty tip jar. They need to see that someone has already tipped. I think votes are similar often times. I use vote bots often, but in very small amounts (usually 0.5 std per post) and usually within a few minutes of posting just to ensure it starts out with a bit of traction and doesn't get immediately buried. I'm still honestly not sold on how well it works, but it seems to be slightly above 0% profitability so technically it doesn't seem like it costs me anything to use them in the long run. I hope to not need them in the next couple of months. Once I have a good following I should be able to get few upvotes pretty quickly after posting. (Here's to hoping while working hard for it)
Now, what I think of as cheating, even though I've thought about it briefly, is spending a couple hundred dollars to try and bot upvote my post to the trending page. Then possibly it would get real traction and make an additional $50 or so. I can't bring myself to try that for several reasons.

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I have learned a ton on Steemit in these two weeks! I did almost quit on several occasions, but I've decided that I enjoy it so I'll keep on keeping on even if I don't get the results I'm looking for right away. If it becomes like work, I'm sure I'll step away some, but I seem to be drawn to it now. I'm not sure, maybe it's more like an addiction? There are times it definitely feels like it as I'm refreshing my steemd page looking of updates!
What are your thoughts? What' keeps bring you back here? What nearly drives you away? Addicted to it yet?