Communities and a better search facility I believe will make a difference.

I agree too @paulag! Community support is so important for one to continue to want to be here and make things work for themselves and in turn, make it work for the community/ies they are involved in.

When I first started here, my main support and motivator was the #needleworkmonday community and I guess I was lucky that I found it by searching a word "crochet" and in the list of the many results returned, needleworkmonday was in there and I decided to give it a try. I think without it, I would have been a headless chicken, earning $0.00 in every post and would have felt demoralized to continue, like what I see with some Steemians. It was nice to see the upvote earnings grew little by little throughout the year. And it is also a very nice feeling to be part of some nice Steemians' autovotes.

I also think contests are a great way to grow and build our account. Along the way, when I discovered colouring contests, googlyeyes contests, comments contests and #ccc contests, it became fun and exciting to post here, especially when we win little here and little there and we expand our horizons.

Many a times, chatting with some newbies, they do not know what to post, and are shy to post. I will encourage them to join contests and keep building their account here. Even if they begin with earning 0.0001 a post, little by little, they will grow for sure if they continue to post and join communities who support each other.

At least by being a part of a community or joining contests which in turn becomes part of a community, there are reasons to post, to engage, to learn, to be here and to explore other communities and grow from there.

And I am so grateful for your support too and the #tenkminnows project for I am now getting upvotes I have never gotten before. I will continue to share and contribute what I can here to the rest of the lesser SP Steemians through my Thursday Favourites contest and encourage others to participate in any contest for that matter. I also noticed that there are Steemians who earn their living through the little that they earn here because life is hard for them. But at the end of the day, it really is up to them how they choose to invest or spend their earnings here.