Dear @cryptoctopus, great insights! I'm also one of the newcomers, just started in the summer, did not invest, but tried all kinds of things here on Steemit. It's been really fun, I tried coding for the first time in my life, I tried photo-shopping, now I'm trying song-writing... What a great way to step out of the box, with sometimes success and sometimes not so much :) So yeah, I haven't really been establishing a core competence, still working on that..
But, if you could touch on one subject in a next post: Getting upvotes is one thing, but how to drive more engagement, views and comments to your blog, that is really something I would really like to learn more about.
That's a good one. I will write about this and keep trying new things!