Do you think my post would have gotten $15 of engagement with out bid-bots? I can answer that question for you by pointing to my last several posts. The answer is no

In that case, unfortunately, the community of Steem stakeholders don't value your work for much.

I'm not endosing that view, but it is what it is.

On the matter of onboarding, I think we have to address retention more than onboarding. 50c/user is a reasonable cost for a blockchain-based solution which has more to offer than a cheap(er) pure web site. The problem is that very few users who get signed up on here actually stick with it so even 50c is just a waste of money in bulk. Fix the former and 50c becomes a reasonable and generally tiny portion of overall customer acquisition costs.

Hah, your bidbotting succeeded in getting some actual engagement by virtue of me showing up to downvote against the paid votes. Irony.