Actually, sometimes I feel it would pay off much better if I took photographs and posted those, as opposed to cryptocurrency news. I see a bunch of simple photo-posts make just as much as my lengthiest posts. As far as I can see, yes there are more rewards in the cryptocurrency and steemit posts but there is also a significantly bigger pool and lots more competition for those rewards.
I would try out all the other categories myself, but most of my followers followed me because of cryptorelated things so I don't really want to scare anybody away by post all kinds of other stuff!
Yes the problem is that a whale can post the same news, but do it worse, and still get 100x more views and votes.
I think they are working on improvements. One I really like is the addition of smaller subcommunities surrounding a certain subject. That should allow people to stand out much better within certain subcommunities.