Great points. I'm really glad that I spent my first month commenting on posts of others way more than posting my own articles. I also found people in my topic interest tags who were doing well and could easily see what they were doing that I could emulate. And by commenting on the posts of those same people, I was able to build relationships with them, that helped me start getting traction pretty quickly. That and entering contests.
I'm looking to help a group of poor youths get started on here well soon and am really appreciating posts like this that help clarify exactly what are the factors of success. Thanks for this.
(You've also encouraged me to make another attempt at DLive, which I just couldn't get the tech working for previously.)