The ability to earn for writing content is what brought me here in the first place. But as anyone who has been a member for more than a couple of months will attest, your first couple of months are spent writing into a proverbial black abyss. Your early content will make no money at all, if you're lucky maybe a few cents.
What motivated me in the beginning was the promise of profit and building an audience. Steem isn't for everyone, it's definitely not a get rich quick scheme, it's an exercise in patience. I go through the motions of wanting to give up and then I get a @curie or @utopian-io vote and my faith is restored once again.
Still at the end of the day, Steemit will never be profitable for me considering my hourly development rate for freelance work is $100 and I can easily spend hours writing a Steemit post, but what keeps me around is the ability to write about whatever I want and earn a little bit of money.
Yup, there's always potential to earn for the content you put out, it's attractive ;) Without that, the "community" would be much smaller ;)