Yeah, when I first joined I was making decent value for my posts. The last three weeks have been increasingly frustrating, getting many up-votes but no value. When you bring up the need to decentralize to the "whales" on here, it just gets ignored. I saw a "test post" yesterday that made more money than almost anyone does on here a whole 1.97 or whatever, and all it said was "testpostignore". 64 up-votes for nothing! Either the curators of this site need to learn comprehension, or the current distribution is rewarding and will continue to reward just a few people. This steemit platform needs a major overhaul of decentralization.
Also, I am not sure why it is just to reward anyone who goes to "steemfest" with 1000 SP. Great you get to go to their little party in Amsterdam, but what about if you have actual responsibilities like running a business and being a father? I can't just drop my shit and head to Amsterdam even if I had the money. However if I lived in Europe I could probably easily make it. So they are basically giving anyone who lives in Europe a free 1000 steem for attending a party, while I blog away and bring thousands of views to this site but get nothing. 3 months of work for less SP than some newbie gets for going to a party? Seems fair. Don't reward YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of views, just throw 1000 SP to some random people who show up for your party. I am not going to keep promoting this site if something doesn't change.
I agree, the rewards have greatly reduced. I can see that they are trying different things like adding savings accounts and things like that. I'm still writing every day and still have hope... But, I do feel like usage has gone down a little. I don't think as many people are writing anymore, which is a scary thought. I totally understand wanting to cash out, but I think it did cause a little bit of a collapse in the price of Steem. That chat seems like a ghost town compared to the good ol' days. I figure I'll just keeping writing and collecting whatever Steem power I get. Will this be the next Bitcoin... probably not, but we don't know the future holds, I guess we'll find out over the next few months. I am curious what an economic collapse would do the price?