I tried selling steemit.com to friends. I had been able to tell them how much I was making monthly, but that is gone now. It used to be that voting would render a constant stream of income with said initial investment, but as you said, it doesn't work that way any longer.
In order to make the same as I made in November, I would have to put up another $100k, and I don't even like have that much in one wallet unless it's a secured, off-line, paper wallet. Less likely to have in on one steemit account.