Yet another awesome post, Erika. Coming into this thing with a few friends on Steemit, but no "following", I definitely attribute part of my moderate success thus far to Persistence in Posting. And that has been a challenge, because I'm already a BUSY LADY without writing a Steemit post every day. Luckily, I had a few pieces filed away that I could post with little to no revision necessary. I try to stay ahead by supplementing these already-written pieces in among the fresh new-new pieces. That gives me a little more time to work on stuff.

Also, I've found that commenting on other posts I've enjoyed has gotten me some followers here on Steemit--followers who, presumably, see my posts in their feeds and, hopefully, click on them.

But honestly, it's the whale votes that bring you the Steem love. My first post that made more than $20 was upvoted by @Stellabelle, and then my three posts so far that made $100 or more were upvoted by @berniesanders. I don't know these people, but apparently something in my writing speaks to them, which is pretty cool.

I think the main takeaway, for me, from my Steemit experience so far is that it has to be about the content and the community, and not about the money. Because if it's about the money, I will be all sad and disappointed when a post doesn't do as well as I'd hoped. But if it's about the content and the community, I'm happy that a few people read and enjoyed my work, and I'm more likely to reach out an engage with those people, thus building more community and inspiring more good content.