I have been trying really hard to move up the ranks through being active and helping out the #steemit hashtag on instagram and help sign up people from that community to Steemit. Feels so lame bringing in new members and then only being able to vote them up 1 cent when they introduce themselves... after 500 comments it also feels like whales only look at posts and dolphins are almost just as rare as them in comments.

Lately I burned out and lost the incentive to keep posting when a post about the facebook community makes 10k and none of the "whales" ever reply or reach back out to someone.

I have also invested 200 Steem of my own purchase so all you see in my wallet isn't just from what I've earned here.