This is amazing! I've had (have!) the exact same feelings like you and you have been one of the people that I was jealous of because you seemed to earn so much money, lol!

And I know how you feel, I'm in a period where I feel the same thing. I don't want to put out my heart and soul in my articles just to get absolutely nothing back, so how to do it? Don't have an answer to it, was thinking to try to do the "nice" bots, Hive account@randowhale etc. Will see if that would give any results. I found one whale though who has the same opinion as us minnows and is trying to find a solution: https://steemit.com/steemit/@yallapapi/hey-steemit-whales-how-d-you-like-to-fix-all-of-steemit-s-problems-and-make-bank-by-doing-absolutely-nothing

Btw, your articles are really good, the kind of quality content that Steemit is meant for.