I think part of my reflection here also dates back to the time I found and joined Steemit, and HOW that happened. I was on Facebook, and a friend sent me a link to AN ARTICLE, and there was no mention whatsoever about Steemit, or a publishing venue... just the content of the article.

As a content creator (and consumer) I read the article, and then started looking at other content and decided I liked the format I was seeing — reminded me of "social blogging" — so I made an account without ever looking at the whole GET PAID angle!

Which is pretty much a textbook example of how "normal people" become part of web communities.

My next 30 day "experiment" here is going to be 30 days of blogging and article writing exclusively for my old external audiences. In other words, posts written purely to gain outside readership, with pretty much NO attention to whether or not the posts are likely to get rewards here.

Given what I know about where I still have some pull... that'll be on the order of 20,000 pairs of eyeballs over the next month... or about twice our entire community of active posters...