Can You Still Make Money with Steemit?

I just read an interesting post by @markymark(https://steemit.com/steemit/@themarkymark/top-10-paid-out-posts-in-steem-history-number-6-will-surprise-you) about the 10 all time highest paid Steemit posts. The top one made over $46,000.00 while the lowest paid of these ten still got over $15,000.00.

All of them were posted in 2016 specifically in late July and early August, except for the # 9 article which was posted last year-2017. Now at the time of these posts Steem had just had an increase in price and during this slot of time (July-August) it reached a peak of over $4.00 and a low of about $1.50.

Strange that we didn't have such huge payouts last December when the price peaked at over $8.00, well maybe not strange just proves that getting votes is not as easy or at least the super whales are no longer voting or maybe they have cashed out some SP. Some of the big voters were @ned, @dan, @smooth, @berniesanders, @blocktrades etc.

I checked and it appears these accounts don't have as much power as back then. So it is only logical that to achieve such big payouts is practically impossible today, well especially at this stage when the Steem price is really low, I only wish it could go back to at least $2.00.

As for the authors of these posts most of them are still on Steemit but their SP is not that high, so I guess they have put their earnings to good use.

Well just to check out things I went to the trending page to see if it is possible to still make big amounts of money on Steemit, unfortunately it seems most of the trending articles are there because of the use of bid-bots, out of the top ten I found only one had not used bid-bots and it had about $180.00 of votes, but it had been posted about an hour ago so I guess it will probably make a lot more in the next days.

So then I looked at the Hot page, and here, yes I found a lot of posts making anywhere from $20.00 to nearly $100.00 in the first 40-45 minutes without bid-bots. So these articles should make a nice amount 7 days from now.

What does this mean to me? Well, first of all I think those huge payouts on Steemit where you got over 5 grand for one post are a thing of the past, but if you do have good connections, write decent articles and are steady with your output you can actually make a living on this platform.

Now I am just talking about people who have little to invest, just their time and work, sure I know it also depends on where you live, being able to make $50.00 a day is not enough for a country in Europe or North America, but in other places it is more than enough to live on.

Our friends in developed countries are in a position where they can invest and make a killing if Steem does go up, so Europeans and North Americans who have some capital can also make a living on Steemit. Also I am not taking curation into account here, people with a lot of SP can also count on income from this source, and it could be a nice amount.

So I think sticking with Steemit even when Steem's price is low is still a good idea, you will always have the hope that things will get much better, and indeed I think they will.