I don't think people can invest in Steemit as a community, because they can't develop their own community. Getting a lot of followers doesn't really mean you will earn a lot. If the whales don't vote you, you don't earn much. The ones that are voting me very heavily in the first 30 minutes (up 80 - 100 votes) is because they expect a whale to upvote my posts. I will stop blog posting for a while, because I don't want to feel I am abusing the BROKEN system.
I don't see anything broken there. That is the whole intent of the 30 minute reverse auction. Voters have to compete by voting earlier and earlier, and by doing so the rewards are shifted to the author. Thus authors who are gaining votes based on track record and reputation are rewarded for it.
If someone votes early expecting there to be later votes, and then there aren't (assume because later more careful voters look at the post and decide it is crap), that vote is wasted. To the extent there is a luck component based on what happens to be seen and what isn't, that will cancel out. Smarter voters will do better. (The luck component -- and didadvantage to people in certain time zones -- will be reduced when the first voting period is put back to 24 hours from 12 hours; that was a bad change IMO.)
At the human voter level this is pretty much it. But once you map whale behavior statistics in relation to authors getting upvotes and have values and correlations like 70-80-90%, then you can automate the upvoting process and start milking the cow.
I mean, let's say I know you are going to vote anonymint with 80% chance, then my risk is too low. He'll get my upvote quickly to front-run "smooth the whale". Now repeat this with every other whale and their favorite authors, or even comment authors, and you are suddenly milking the curation through automation via a robotic circle-jerk. Humans are pretty "low entropy" in their behavior and it's not gonna get better anytime soon.
Having said that, we are far from being in a totally broken system.
You do read a lot of threads and comments and spend a lot of time writing comments. A few clicks for upvotes in things that you find nice (in content that you are already engaged in) won't hurt your time schedule.
Btw I do. But I don't have time to keep track of when I am not doing it enough.
It's ok, don't worry about it.