I'll be honest as a whitelisted author I was using the service for a while, but at some point it almost felt dirty being able to purchase a large vote. So I stopped and decided to let my small rewards be what they were and just keep plugging away.

Honestly this entire idea is amazing! It will be even more amazing if it can help the path towards real communities being born. Ones that are truly about a niche and about bringing in people from outside of the Steem community.

I'm looking into development of a niche community that doesn't require the current Steem user base to succeed. Goal will be to bring in people who are involved in the niche and introduce them to crypto as a bonus, but having a site worthy of their time even without the earnings. By creating what will be a stand alone site that integrates SMTs we will be attempting to create the true vision of what Steem can become IMO. Already have a couple non Steem people ready to join me and I'm barely in the planning stages. Helps that it's a niche that I'm deep into and have a good amount of contacts. Getting a little excited about the potential of everything.