After reading your post i went through some stats of steem. It looks like steem really picked up in the middle of November 2017. The value also went up by 5 times. I wish i was earlier here. It could have been easy for me to make an investment back then since it did not cost that much.
Unless one uses upvote bots or has whale friends it becomes very hard to make money on steemit. It takes a lot of effort to even earn 1 dollar a day. Since the non investors are not earning that much they are remaining in-active. Steemit has to do something to make them to continue to use.
You just need to build a following with good content. It takes time. I don't have whales for friends, but I do okay