I couldn't agree more with your diagnoses and prognoses regarding user retention. Having been a user for about a week now, I could easily see myself becoming one of the users who tries to create content for about a month and then fizzle out.

Steemit isn't ALL about money, but lets be frank, it is a cryptocurrency site and that is in large part what differentiates it from other social network/blogging platforms. People join and are told that if they create decent content, they will be rewarded for it. People have short attention spans and so when it seems too good to be true, they leave.

A lot of these users probably leave because they aren't honestly contributing much and essentially want something for nothing. But I myself have read some very interesting and thoughtful posts on here that have garnered a few cents.

As someone who lives in California, I had better really love contributing content to a community for less than 1$ per hour. And lets face it, a very large portion of the best content on the platform will come from people in a similar circumstance (people for whom effort and time invenstment aren't worth pennies per hour.)

I myself am sold on the idea of a decentralized currency and the altruistic benefits of a global sharing of ideas, info and stories. That is why I want to continue creating content and reading the content of others. But I do feel like user retention will be the biggest challenge for Steemit and I can't wait to see what they come up with!

I'm not really sure how to solve this