well, from 1 year ago about when your account was worth a lot making 5-10 a day steem was probably up towards 3 or 4 bucks per... so thats 1/3 or 1/4 of the price right there. and you are right, i haven't been on steem a lot but yes, it is a lot different. A lot of the whales now just delegate to earn passive income, you rarely get a whales vote because you have to pay for it if you want it, noon is actually in control of the account. They are trying to do some stuff to fix it and make users more interactive and not just have bots. SMTs are a new thing that should be coming out next year that could fix a lot of that. i would read into it if i was you but are you planning on sticking around? i would... work your account up as high as you can before the bull run!
I am going to stick around, just needed to rant a little. I didnt expect to make any money starting back up yet. Just the negitivty got to me a little, and i realize that negitivty is going to exist on all site to some degree. But it is upsetting you post a post under a hashtah, and the very next post posted on that hashtag is someone mocking your post, with very little effort. And there getting a bunch of upvote. The reason i came back is partly because of a post i seen on twitter that stated they where try to get more artist and talented craftsmen on the site. Which i though was great, but there not going to get more artist and talented people if the negitivity presist.i'll stick around to see how it pans out. But for now only going to put 10% effort in comparison to the effort i would otherwise put in...