Dissecting the Steem System - revelation

Hello readers, last year around August, I tried to use Steem to find out more, learn, and adapt, since I am totally in the #deletefacebook camp even before it started. I deleted my (original) Facebook profile 3-4 years ago. Yet maintained an empty shell profile for logging into some websites that use Single Sign On, and for some apps.

What I tested so far:
Posting several articles from my past blog, plus new articles, some photos, some excellent photos from the SLR camera, and some decent photos from the smartphone. Posted video links. Posted comments. Comments on popular posts I followed. Random comment on some photos I liked. Placed news URL. Placed news with some comment. I did almost everything we can do for posting, sharing, voting, re-steeming. Just like what you may do in your social media such as FB.

Then I finally realised the $$$ value is both distracting, yet this is the one metric everyone is looking at. It is right there beside the UP.

I inspected articles or posts that had high $ value, even some seemingly from just 1-2 votes. $5! But other popular posts with over 20-30 votes, gets 10 cents.

Look at the above sample. This account has over 5000 Steem and 28000 Steem Power.

Just one post of his friend eating noodles, got the votes worth $5 USD.

I have 0.11 Steem and 5.6 Steem Power. Last month I posted several articles. The highest value was $0.10 and mostly are valued less.

Apparently as a conclusion, it is clear that you must have lots of Steem Power and Steem to be able to command good payouts and good (monetised) votes to increase your value or earnings. Otherwise, even if you aren't thinking of money, the cost to benefit of writing here, may be similar to other social media.