I think it's a bit of both. Having a personal brand and engaging with other people on the platform is what helps individual bloggers shine. So yeah, you want to have friends with lots of SP. But how do you make such friends if not by making connections in the community?

As for an external blog: since most of my career I've written for others, I did not invest enough in my personal brand and blog on techslut.com . So if I want to make more money there than I do here, I have to invest a lot more in marketing. Both time and budget wise. On steemit it's pretty easy - make comments, buy upvotes if you want extra post visibility, and roam the Discord and steemit.chat making new friends. Some of those friends will turn out to be Dolphins, Orcas and sometimes even Whales.