This bicycler with only one leg and one arm is a bit how I have felt these last weeks on steemit, after my own extreme 1.4 Million Dollar downvote story from nearly 47 to 4 over just a comment I posted twice. Actually, now I see he is a 2.2+ Million Dollar Whale. I learned the hard way from a reputation of 4, after doing the math, that I had to work 5 times as hard to regain my reputation. After seeing it takes 13 weeks to remove my invested funds I decided to begin the power down process.

This ate me up inside, but because I had invested about $500 into steemit, most of which went into SP (Steem Power), and learning it takes over 3 months at least to get all but 5 steem out, I somehow pushed through my own self censorship to post a few more articles.

Then last week I learned also that despite what Steemit's FAQs declaration of a 75% minimum author reward (see above) I only received 58% of the revenues posted at the exact time of payout. After pulling my reputation up to 9.6 yesterday, I had another payout - only this time it came to a hair above 55%. Here are the numbers to see for yourself.

6.039 + 2.005 = 8.044

55% of 14.58 = 8.019

This really took the steem out of me in more ways than one and has made me to feel as though I was Juan José Méndez Fernández in the steemit race pedaling without an arm and a leg, which in my case I had started off with some 6 weeks or so ago. Anybody have an extra arm or leg they can loan me? LOL

Who is Juan José Méndez Fernández anyway?

He was born on in Barcelona, Spain, missing part of his left arm and leg. Yet he pushed through to overcome that amazing handicap to compete at the 2004 Summer Paralympics in cycling, ending up as the number three cyclist to finish in the Road Trial LC4 race. He won 2 silver medals and a bronze medal at the 2005 European Road Cycling Championship. He won a bronze medal at the 2006 Cycling World Road Championships. At the 2007 World Track Cycling Championships, he earned a bronze medal. He competed at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in cycling and was the number two cyclist to finish in the Road Trial LC4 race. He was the number three cyclist to finish in the Individual Pursuit track LC4 race. Méndez just kept going to be a recipient of a 2012 Plan ADO scholarship from the Catalan region of Spain. At a two-day para-cycling event in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2013, he finished second in one of the races. This dude rocks with inspiration and all with just one leg and one arm! If he can do that, just think what you and I can do.

Apart from inspiration, if you were in my shoes (or shoe :),
what would you do to create a way forward on Steemit?

^source

The only solutions I have been able to find is:

Buying bot upvotes to pull my reputation back up, but with only 55% of author rewards, I loose money. Plus, if it keeps going down, instead of up, what's the use?
Finding whales with enough SP (Steem Power) who care enough to give me good upvotes. The challenge with that is getting their attention without appearing rude.
Just dumping this account and trying to create another.
Or simply focusing on my Minds.com channel, where after the first week I surpassed in subscribers what took me 6 weeks in followers on steemit and now after 2 weeks, I'm near 22,000 views, which is maybe 1% of 2 months on steemit. Given the dead response on this post, that's where I'm leaning the majority of my time and efforts for the time being. Of course there are some areas not yet developed as well as steemit also, but at least there's no domination of whales there. If interested, you can sign up here.