Yeah it can be tough. I only made it big for a a month or two with the help of some whales like dantheman, the original inventor of the Steem blockchain and former CTO of steemit. Then other whales didn't like how knowledge on consciousness or morality was getting to trending, and would flag it. You can go see that start in January. Then at the end of February I had enough and called them out for being inconsistent  and irrational hypocrites and bullies of their power to choose what posts were allowed to get to trending and visibility, and what posts were allowed to keep their rewards. They cam e up with BS excuses like "whale swarm" while others posts got more whale votes and higher payout... They don't value real valuable knowledge, so they say it "is not the type of content that will help steemit attract, retain, or grow a user base, nor will incentivizing it with high rewards do so". This is how many people view quality information, as not valuable, whales and other popular users like atsdavid have disregard for quality valuable knowledge that can improve lives.

I left for 3 months because I was then being flagged on all posts. Abuse is not something I tolerate,s o since nothing was changing on Steemit Inc side, I left  in protest and not wanting to continue to be treated like that. Nothing has changed since I came back, was still being flagged, then I called it out again and dantheman flagged bernie the bully troll whale down to -10 rep.