All my adult life I have made a living from creating content online. I've made music to be sold and streamed online (iTunes Spotify etc), created video content and built mid-large youtube channels and designed products for which I earn sales royalties through sites like Zazzle and RedBubble. As somebody in this line of work, the potential of Steemit is incredibly exciting to me, so much so that I invested into the platform with a lot of enthusiasm and confidence. This potential has since been increased even more with the inception of platforms such as Dtube and Dsound, which are to video/music creators what Steemit is to bloggers. The traditional ad-based model of monetisation is in many ways broken, and wastes a lot of time and data for viewers, who are often uninterested in the products and services they are being pitched.
However, at the moment I would still rather create content for YouTube than I would for Dtube, and for Spotify than I would for Dsound, and no it's not because of having a larger user base. When I create content I'm hoping that it will be something that will become a passive income stream for me. Music that I created in 2011 is still selling without me doing anything, youtube videos that I uploaded 3 years ago are still earning ad revenue, and This Christmas I'm once again selling T Shirts on Zazzle which I designed for last Christmas. If I write a Steemit post, or upload to Dtube or Sound I will earn for 7 days and no more, even if that content continues to get viewers thereafter. This is a vastly less desirable business model for most creative people. Imagine for example if the Beatles had only been able to earn revenue for the first 7 days after releasing their songs! That's a lot of lost income.
Steemit is great in many ways, but to REALLY attract top content creators, artists, YouTubers etc to the STEEM blockchain the payouts need to continue forever and not just stop at 1 week. STEEM needs to be BETTER and more appealing than the status quo and at the moment it just isn't. The user base will come, and we are seeing more and more new users joining the platform everyday, but the issue of payouts stopping after 7 days is a big one, especially when it comes to Dtube and Dsound. I'm sure I'm not the first person to address this, but the STEEM development team need to take it seriously. Users like 
Sure, Steemit is not just about the money, but for this to be a success it will be important to make the platform as appealing as possible for people who are considering using this blockchain as a way to share their creativity with the world. I hope that some of the more influential people here on Steemit will get to see this post and consider using their voice to call for this change, because without it Steemit will never fulfil it's potential.