I'm still new to steemit, but i wanted to share my first impression on it.
First i need to say i'm in no way an author or blogger, i'm still from the oldschooler, i remember in the 90's when internet was still mostly academic, how we used to make fun of bloggers like people spreading their life on the internet, like really ? ? :D now it turn facebook is probably biggest platform on the internet, so seem lot of people become into this, and it even become a buisness.
I even used to think having system of likes and vote on platforms is not such a good idea, because it often hinder true redaction and reflection, just putting a like and move on, instead of redacting at least a comment of appreciation or discussion, and i tend to think once a system of like or voting is there, some people are going to do everything to get more likes and votes, and focus more on cheesy stuff to get likes rather than posting more honnest or un biased things, or thought provocating things to trigger discussion rather than focusing on likes.
It's to say i'm bit of information purist, but if you listen to me you'll never make any money with your blogs lol I still from the move of information should be free etc, but blogs become a things of its own, if people can make money with this, it's all the best :)
That said, what i like about it is it make the good combo of different things that i've been looking for for a while.
The problem with existing platform as i see it is
Facebook : can't really make good long formated post, there is not really any indexing, or search engine, and it's throwable news feed, not that great to write long post and index them.
Forum : Already better for formating and indexing, but generaly rely on centralized moderation, and it's not so practical to filter out the informations or users you want to read, and it end up as giant stack of information with only centralized moderators who are able to filters things out, generally following policy in the moto that its private board with a chart, and if you are not happy with it find another board.
Blogs platform : good for formating, and no moderators, but lack of global indexing on different users, and lack of community between differents bloggers on the same platform, hard to get visibility etc.
Steemit is the good combo that for me solve all the issues, there is the community aspect, the following thing to create groups, global tags and search engine, still good formating like blogs even if it can probably be improved, and no global moderators to decide what or who can post on it. Whales will weight to push some content up, but not removing content or banning users.
As for people saying they are not paid enough, for something who has no advertising, and no general guideline or specific marketing objective, its already good imo to be able to get paid this way, without relying on third party advertising, and better than forums or facebook.
And the thing i really like is the fact that authors will post their content free to view, but can still get paid, which defeat the argument we heard in the 2000's about author need to use drm to lock their content because otherwise everyone will just get it for free, with producers not wanting to hear the argument that if people like the artist they will still pay for it for him to keep doing his art, and even fund him to develop more, even if they can view it for free.
If this buisness model turn out to be viable it can lead the way for many other things, which i think is cool :)
Well here are my two cents so far :)