Nice post, though sadly a lot of times the followers people get are bot/spam accounts and they don't really lead to the upvotes that you think they will. I just hit a year on Steem and I am pretty sad to see that my post rewards haven't really increased even though I have increased my SP by close to 10x by buying STEEM and posting pretty much daily. I don't plan on giving up though. Everything else you said is really solid and I totally agree with it :)