" I also know that the quality of what you do is not enough. You have to market yourself. You have to market yourself, or join a group where members market each other."
And that is why we have a world teeming in junk with little quality. Marketing is rewarded better than producing work of quality, so we end up with a world that excels at marketing and not very much work of quality.
Please note that the whole POINT of marketing is to sell stuff that wouldnt be sold otherwise. So when you have a world that rewards marketing, you have a world that actively promotes poor quality work. It's even HARDER to find good work because its drowned out in a tidal wave of garbage that is being marketed with great skill.
As long as Steemit rewards marketing rather than work of quality, it will end up as a sea of "look at the photo I found on this great stock photo site".
It's sad, but there is little anyone here can do about it. THe only people whose votes actually count are the whales, and they are not interested in promoting quality posts - just posts that market the platform and those that are written by their close friends - regardless of the quality.
We all have a choice as to what to market and what marketing to pay attention to in our lives.
Your position is naive in the extreme. Even the best of quality products or content will fall by the wayside if no one knows about them, has never heard of them, and does not get to see them.
Van Gough, other painters and sculptors, and many brilliant musicians died impoverished and without an audience who had ever seen or heard of them. How many great novels are there that may have never been read.
it is not so much marketing that is at fault, but the quality of the marketers themselves and the audiences that they are marketing to.
Word of mouth is also (sometimes very effective) marketing. Becoming socially involved by interacting with other posters on their pages is also marketing, but it is also rewarding for both parties if it is sincere.