Hey - might not be 100% what you have in mind, but did you know https://steem.ninja/ let's you refer people and earn from that referral? You can even set your own 'price' for the accounts you 'sell' and thus decide what you earn from your referral yourself.
It might be a bit 'cleaner' from an outsiders perspective than earning from other peoples posts as tish would easily be seen as 'ponzi' where the first movers get passive income from the work of others?
Anyway, just adding this as an fyi :-) Cheers!
thats cool, i do understand there is stigma around it, and im only talking about a very small reward. Its a tricky one but i still fee like it would help to get more people to steemit. It has flatlined for a while now which is not great. Coinbase, ledger all do referral programs it doesn't have to be scammy.