Everyone has their own path ... Blogging isn't for everybody. Although it can be a stress reliever :)
You're not joking on the amount of networking that you need to do on here to maintain a popular blog. It's a lot of consistent & hard work to get people to pay attention to you haha
One could earn some decent amount just by leaving engaging comments, especially on whales' posts haha. But I don't have all the time in the world to do that. I guess that is why some fellow bloggers who started the same month already surpassed my rep haha. It does not matter anymore as long as I'm earning a bit.
Yeah, I've found that the whales typically "swim I the same circles", and most of my comments wouldn't get a reply comment or upvote. I wrote it off as part of "the experiment" where whales stopped voting. We joined about the same time! :)
It seems like whale voting has changed a little, with more whales voting in small amounts.
Although with the jump in Steem price, I bet they pulled back again on sharing their votes..