I'm still not totally sure what the target market for Steemit is. Obviously it's flexible, but one of the common uses I'm seeing is to post articles on various topics. There are various other sites that aim to do that, so let's see how they compare.
3tags
3tags has been around for a while. I joined fairly early on whilst still playing with Tsu and seeing what else could earn me something. 3tags seems to have stopped paying authors since then. I only ever made a few cents anyway. As the name suggests you could put 3 tags on any post. I never got much response there, but there were similar articles to what I see here. Obviously some were re-hashing existing information. I've already discussed that.
The stats show it's getting nothing like the traffic of Steemit and is not currently growing.
Minds
Minds was similar to 3tags. I think you can monetise it, but only by selling 'points' that you get for views and can earn just by visiting. You can use points to 'boost' a post and get it seen by more people. I don't see a lot of great content there to be honest, but maybe there are some good people on it. Note that 3tags are re-posting content there. There's a lot of cross-posting between these various sites. I've had people saying Steemit is a scam when I link stuff there.
The visitor numbers are of a similar order to Steemit, but each user visits a lot less pages. They do still seem to be growing, but have been around for a couple of years now. They have an app whose views will not be registered, so maybe it's even more popular than it looks.
Bitlanders
Bitlanders is an odd beast. It's very cartoony and you avatar has to be a cartoon character that you can customise. I do check in there now and again, but never made more than a few dollars. Originally they paid in Bitcoin, but now show their own currency that you can exchange for Paypal or Payza with a threshold of $10. I never got to that and decided to donate what I have to some of the charities on the site. They have a fair selection of those. It seems to be big in some Asian countries (top are Pakistan and India) and I find the content to be not very interesting. Lots of food pictures, ripped off videos and travel blogs. You can gain points by views and by being active. They have a chat where some bots with do 'surveys' for points, but it's the same ones over and over. I also see the same old content on the front page. Apparently some people make a fair bit, but it just wasn't fun for me.
Their stats show a slump this year. Again, views per user are low. They also have an app and perhaps that is the main way people use it.
Medium
Medium is a big player in this sphere. I have to admit I only go there when someone links to it or it comes up in a search. I don't browse the site generally. Apparently they have a membership scheme that gives you access to certain content. I assume people get paid based on that, but I've not really looked into it. There's so much content accessible for free.
They get 40x the visitors or Steemit, but only 10x the views.
Conclusions
I'm probably missing some other options, but Steemit seems to rank pretty well for visitors and views compared to there. People seem to stick around to read more pages than they do on other sites. I think Steemit ranks well on Google, so it gets views from non-members. That's important for exposure, but we need to get more of those signed up so they can be voting. Steemit is also a lot newer than any of these, so it's doing well for its age. If it could reach the size of Medium it will be a serious force with a huge economy. Of course even Medium is a minnow compared to Facebook, so there's massive potential.
Personally I'm treating Steemit as a form of blog. I just don't have the time for heavy research at the moment, so I will write about what I know and publicise my music and anything else that I think people should see.
Have you used other sites that pay? What has been your experience? Should we even expect to get paid for blogging?