Yeah, relationships seem to be most important here on Steemit if you want good payouts. You could be posting the greatest content on the planet but if you have no relationships, there's not a lot of chance that the content will get noticed by anyone at all.
I do think that the apps like D.tube. D.sound and so on will actually become more popular and more used than Steemit.com
The most annoying thing about steemit is that whenever you post on any of those apps, the post appears on your Steemit blog as well. So if you're using all of those apps, you could really spam the hell out of your blog on Steemit...
But I'm still really excited about this blockchain even though it has some problems and it's quite hard to get a name for yourself.