Thanks for your message @goldenarms. Please clarify what you have in mind when you say: “How are you ever going to make money if you're smoking all the product your supposed to sell? Any dealer with a dam knows this is not the way to stack a profit!”. Can you give an example or two?

From the viewpoint I have developed while working in my writing community, I would add that people should early on assess carefully the cost-benefit of making a big effort in Steemit, and in doing so they should define benefit in a way that goes beyond up-votes and Steem Dollars earned.

Playing the “earn Steem Dollars game" is a prescription for months of frustration for many people, and so they need to see the concept of Steemit rewards in a much broader sense that what that game entails.

Also, and perhaps even more important in some professional fields I know, investing a lot of time here to ‘be social and love the Whales’ will have detrimental effects on the time people need to produce high-quality work within their particular fields.