While it might be a kink of the reputation algorithm, I am almost at 50 rep, but didn't make much of anything. About 50 SBD over about ten days. Still, I do beleive it is a good project. I just need to get out of the wilderness, as well as brush up my writing skills. Or maybe photo skills, since the only post that brought significant money was a photo.
One of the things that could work better is distribution of SP over time. A lot of the problems come from human psychology. It works like this:
People come in, see big numbers on main page.
Have a $_$ moment, and go write their first post.
Most likely the part where they thought ??? PROFIT! never comes.
They spend time learning the system, which is a moving target, I might add, and write their second and subsequent posts.
Then it goes one of several ways
a. Due to increasing userbase and Zipfs law as specified in White Paper, and mostly static number of whales they drown in the noise and aren't really discovered by curators and leave disappointed.
b. They are discovered, but that doesn't help them much and they either stay or leave.
c. They stick around, communicate, and stay but...As the numbers are showing they eventually leave.
Part of the reason is that the curation system as it is now while well designed depends on the number of actors that are to few in the face of increasing userbase. There are a number of solutions being suggested from splitting the site into siloed parts a la Reddit, to things like @robinhoodwhale, to what I like (since I took part in comming up with the idea) is #spreadthepower, offering services for STEEM / STEEM POWER (there is a way to stend STEEM as SP).
Anyhow, something needs to be done.