I'm still new to the platform, but have a few posts under my belt, and have already made and cashed out real money! That said, I've been surprised -- like others -- to see what content is getting paid out and just how much power a single whale vote carries. Observe:

Just last night, I wrote up a very detailed walkthrough on how to cash out your steem earnings for cold hard cash. The post received more upvotes than anything else. A larger percentage of the community appreciated it than any of my others. That said, it did not earn the highest payout. Why? Because even though there were more people upvoting, they weren't big investors into the platform -- having not purchased or acquired enough STEEM Power for their votes to really hold sway.

While that's more or less the purpose of the platform, and a great motivator that also brings value and makes the whole thing possible, it does seem like things are pretty darn unbalanced in these early days. I wonder what kinds of behaviors this will promote (e.g., stalking the posts of whales to get the first upvote and share in the curation rewards windfall that will surely come). We might even see bots like @wang doing this soon. As annoying and harmful to the community as that might be, it earns money. @wang is sitting North of $1M USD just stalking the #introduceyourself tag.

So what have I made the most money on so far? A post about a dagger. A photo with a little bit of textual introduction. Was it cool? Sure. Does it add value to the platform in terms of content? Certainly. But not too many people thought so, and it didn't contribute to any discussing or sharing of ideas beyond a binary signal of approval /upvote.

What does the future hold?

I don't know what's in store. Clearly the thing is still in beta with an evolving economy. I just hope rewards start to favor those posts that stimulate discussion and interaction -- regardless of whether or not they're original content or plastered with an attractive female and/or the steemit logo. I hope that the whales wealth is spread around through their upvotes and things balance out.

That's all for now!