I have been recently noticing the steemit trends and it's fascinating to analyze the data. Not surprised that steemit is the No 1 Payout candidate, but the real surprise winner is the “life” happens to be the runner up. Introducing yourself is also doing quite well as the number of posts seems to be very low but in comparison the payout seems great.
Other surprises in the list are “blockchain” , “bitcoin”, “cryptocurrency” which surprisingly are in the lower top 15 trends report. One would have expected more interest and better rankings from these topics. General categories (travel, photography etc) are doing really well, so keep these in mind when submitting your stories. The freshness of the content, it’s relevance and your reputation as well as the upvoting are also critical factors which decide the payout but the payout trends report does highlight some great insights.