Wow, what a well-written and useful article. Thanks a lot for sharing! I came here from your post about "#introduceyourself" and are new to Steem. But my first few articles already got me a paid writing gig, so I am determined to start writing regularly going forward. 

It's funny, because I see so many people with the goal of making money being on Steemit. And they make mediocre articles, promote them like crazy, and use all the upvoting bots and whatnot. Where they should rather spend their time on writing really well. 

Similar to instagram, there are SO many guides, but they generally leave the most important thing out - Take awesome pictures. 

And I'm glad you mention that working a lot on something doesn't make it valuable. It could mean you're just slow, or that you're writing about something nobody cares about. 

Anyways, thanks again. I'm happy to see it's working for you, and I'll get around to writing a kickass introduceyourself post =)