I am continually amazed, surprised, and flabbergasted by the things that some people will buy. It's just mindboggling.
From a steem perspective I think that getting people to your blog is part salesmanship and part engagement; you need to engage so people know you're there and relevant, but people also need to be drawn in. I hate the "sales" approach too, so I try to focus on engagement and decent (I hope) content. Small growth so far. We'll see how it goes.
I try mostly to just be myself. I could very easily have sold out and tried to find some "formulaic" method of posting for popularity, but it just doesn't appeal to me.
I'm hopeful all these different tribes will get people interested again. Seeing some "old faces" posting again, which suggests that maybe #NewSteem IS working.