Because I'm not a professional writer it takes me about 8-12 hours(including research) to write a decent blog. My chances of getting a good pay on the post is about 1 in 5 too. You need to do some searches and learn about steemit in general, do an article that is good value, entertaining and well edited & if you can share a personal story it that blog it can help too. Personally steemit to me is not very profitable compared to me working but it is risk free and more than a half decent chance to make extra coin. take your time with your blog, make it a hobby you do for fun and not for money and you will get some good payouts. here are some tools which I use to create good blogs and get decent curation rewards https://steemit.com/steemit/@jaycobbell/why-you-are-still-a-monkey-and-not-a-steemer-yet