Rewarding people like @dollarvigilante is why I've pretty much abandoned Steemit. His posts are crap. Maybe 1 in 20 looks like he put some effort into it, and he spouts pure shit, yet he's some kind of star and is in the 'inner circle' so he gets rewarded for crap.
As for the traffic he's brought here; I couldn't comment on that as I can't see anyway to measure that. Suffice to say, has he spent some of the tens of thousands he's made here marketing Steemit?
Come to think of it, has Dan or Ned spent some of their millions on marketing? That's a big fat no. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don't tell anyone about it, it will never fly.
Cg
In your opinion it is crap... But see how much followers he has...That is something... don't you think? I don't look how much money someone spend to promote steem but how much exposure he brings to us. Let's give you an extreme example... If Donald Trump would be a regular commenter/poster on steemit would you ask not rewarding him because he is not investing back his rewards or/and is making bullshit comments/posts?
The followers came in the first few weeks. At that point he was adding value, but like most things in life, follow through matters, and when supporting Steem required more follow through and effort without being paid $15K/post, he stopped. At this point it is all auto-pilot and even most of the followers are gone (i.e. look at how few actually comment on his posts any more, other than when discussing how they are ripping off Steem)
In mine and many people's opinion; followers don't prove anything. Donald Trump would clearly bring users to Steemit, if Dollar could bring a tenth or even a hundreth of the people Trump would bring, that would be something. However I doubt he is responsible for more than a couple of hundred extra people, and that is optimistic I reckon.
Cg