Please, people, forget the fee. It doesn't work like that, people will think it's a scam.

Have you ever seen that any company has such a model?
Join Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Yahoo Mail, G-mail... with a small fee?

No! It's Free! Because they know how to "cache out" their users. You need to learn that. It's not bad.

Please, do the math:

• number of new users, 1.000 x fee
• number of new users without the fee: 5.000 x 0 but... The price could rise up from 0.3 to 0.5 $ everybody win

Also, 300 Steem is nice, but it's 100 $, it's not all that much. It's one day salary.

It would be waaaaaaaaaay more efficient to organize the contest for something, the best photo. Or to sponsor the contest on some other platform *(GuruShots or DpReview or....) and give at least 500 $ to the winner.

Or find someone promising on Patreon and make a contract:

• we will upvote you 30 x 50 $ = 1.500 $ per month
• if you promote us with the goal of attracting XXXX new users
• if you succeed, we will continue the collaboration

Growth must be natural, effortless. There must be a content to bond the users.
How do you expect us (amateurs) to bring people to something to write about something and to pay a small fee to join in?! so they can earn 0.01 $ per post (median value).

And, if they join, why do you expect them to stay?
The ecosystem was the same for 2 years, what will be different this time, and why do we expect a different result?