Unfortunately a lot of folks dump those tokens the moment they receive them so there's some selling pressure happening. Staking would make more sense because then people can increase the value of the post that gave them the tokens by curating other posts and earning more tokens. Many don't understand the benefits of these systems though. Tomorrow doesn't seem to exist. I hope these things work out but as an individual, I can only do so much.
That's too bad the images do that. Steemit forces all images to be low quality so using png format makes them look as good as possible and I have to hide the actual higher quality but smaller file size images behind. Doesn't make much sense but that's what they get for not asking content producers how to go about doing these things. If I put the higher quality smaller file directly into the post, it shows up blurry and makes the work look terrible.
Yes it's like their eyes light up over seeing a free $8 (if that) in the short term and don't think about what it could turn into 6 months down the line, a year, 5 years. Sonicgroove and creativecoin tokens are ones I'll be looking to get more of and looking at the new tunes token (bless Amy) there's suddenly a few options to get stuck in to!
I know what you mean as an individual can only do so much but I do feel that these niches are going to bring together like minded people who enjoy creating and those who enjoy curating creative works.
I'm personally on a mission to grow my account beyond minnowhood in at least one of these tribes haha! Would love to join the dolphin club on steem and this dolphin council I've heard about (if it's still a thing). By loading up and staking everywhere, one upvote can make a splash in many tribes.
As for the images and image quality. Steemit SUCKS for that! When I've tried to do travel posts direct to steemit, it wouldn't accept anything bigger than 8MB! That seemed to be the cut off. I just moved over to a website (WordPress) and posted from there on steempress, seemed to work somehow so I don't know they condense the images. Otherwise, you could use a website called "postimages.org", upload your pictures there and then insert the url to your steem post. I don't know what the size limit is (or even if there is one) but could be an option for you.