Each post is about a different game. Each post is written from scratch except for the very short part the same. Yes, it takes effort. I have the choose a game to showcase, which can be pretty fast but can also take longer. And the writing takes around 20 minutes. I also try to make sure there are no spelling mistakes or anything like that. It is worth $30? I don't think so. There's probably less than 100 posts on Hive that were ever worth that much. Are they worth the $1 that I was earning? I think so, even a little more than that.

You make the assumption that not getting comments means it's not a good post. That's not true. Just look at posts in the Splinterlands community. Almost all of them have only automated comments. I read many of them and leave votes but I don't comment and most do the same.

Just look at the official Splinterlands' posts about the weekly contests. Those are literally copy paste every week. The only engagement they get is the replies with the entries. It gets a ton of upvotes. O don't see anyone DVing them.