Yes - Steemit is absolutely an avenue for making money for me, and for most people! The great thing about SteemIt (in my opinion at least) is that the way you make money is by contributing good content to the community, which is what I am trying to do. So the incentives are pretty well aligned with the rewards.
It's exactly the fact that you can make money which makes SteemIt great. I think it only hurts the community overall to try to attach a stigma to making money since that's precisely the draw of it. We should celebrate it instead.
If you go to SteemIt.com when you're not logged in the tag line says "Money Talks"!
I see the money moreless just being a side thing rather than the main draw. Its like this is way it should have been but we are just now getting to that.
That's great if making money isn't the main draw for you, but understand that it is for a lot of people here and I don't think this site would exist let alone have the growth that it has had and will have in the future if it weren't for the fact that you can make money. That's what differentiates it from any other blogging / discussion site.
I literally just made another post about this topic which was inspired by your comment: https://steemit.com/steemit/@yabapmatt/why-we-should-celebrate-making-money-on-steemit