It's true. The experience here is best when you just stay away from the trending pages and ignore the bidbots and self upvoting whales. If you make quality stuff and find some friends here, your hard work WILL pay off. It just doesn't happen overnight. And after a little while you don't even really care that it's not monetarily paying off by the thousands of dollars because you're finding a community you care about and being creative and producing stuff you wouldn't produce without the motivation and the feedback. Steemit has been great for me so far, even just for personal growth. I've always written as a personal hobby, but sometimes months go by when I produce nothing and it gets really depressing. This is keeping me going, and that's invaluable to me.