I felt like that for a long time too, and have seen similar things with votes and posts. That's why I never used to promote and am now trying to encourage people to at least look at what posts are being promoted. If authors work hard, it should be enough, but we know that not everyone can get noticed or get paid well. Of course, at least getting paid for our posts is an option here. When authors not only invest time and effort in posts, but their hard hard earned $$$ into it as well, I think it would nice for people to at least take a moment to check the promoted page to see if there is anything that they like.

Working hard to provide content "should" be enough to get noticed, but things take time. Again, this is the only platform that has ever paid me for my content, so for that I am most grateful.

Also, when SBD is used to promote posts and is transferred to null, it is basically burned and gets eliminated from existence.

I thought that the whole idea of promoting posts was strange when they came up with it, but people use it.