It seems to me that Steemit is very much like a mall, in that each person's account or blog is their store, and they are all vying for the traffic from the mall.

These blog stores may or may not have anything useful to offer.  They may contain very quickly generated low quality items, or overpriced and trendy items.  

These would be analogous to blogs that are just cranking out articles to fit the latest trends, or just flood the marketplace with anything that could get a whale bot to give it the golden touch.

In case you don't know yet, whales are users on Steemit with maximum Steem Power (SP)... they are kind of like Oprah when she gives away something. 

They are the most influential people on Steemit because of their voting power. Some of them are using automatic programs called bots so they don't even have to read the articles to upvote them to get the curation payout... curation is just another word for ranking articles for which the first people to rank an article that goes big, get a bigger percentage of the money the article earns.

Then there are stores that provide consumables like food, Chik Fil A, Orange Julius, etc.  kind of like daily news type blogs that keep people fed on the latest things going on in the world.

There also are other stores that may contain very useful things at a reasonable price, but don't have nice store windows, and don't have the advertising budget (i.e. followers to get anyone looking).

Steemen Rose, James Steembett, and Jeff Steemwick

Finally there are the name brand stores, stores that started in their own buildings, built up their business to be a name brand, and then they decided to put a store in the mall.  These would be like a Larken Rose http://larkenrose.com, James Corbett http://corbettreport.com, or Jeff Berwick building up his http://Anarchast.com and http://thedollarvigilante.com/ and then finding Steemit and bringing with them their customer base, which benefits all the other stores in the mall.  These stores sometimes do really well when they first open!

And I think the whales would be like the mall owners, making room for only so many stores in the mall, including some big department stores.    The rest of the people wanting to start business in the mall are left to the scraps of remaining floor space to peddle their articles, like the sunglasses stand, or the watch repair guy.

Steem Rats?

Then you have people that have followings on Facebook... they never really had their own store, so I guess they are like the social groups that all agree to meet at mall after school on the weekend, not even so much to shop or sell anything, but just to see and be seen and window shop.  I guess these would be the people reading and commenting on the articles... they really don't expect to make any money.

Ultimately though, for someone seeing Steemit for the first time, without any Facebook followers, or without having built any self sustaining blog or service on the internet, would starting out on steam be of any advantage?  I guess the first question should be, do they have any articles that people would be interested in, and if so, would they get seen and get followed any better than just creating their own domain and starting with their own website?  Or would they just get lost in the pushing and shoving for Steem dollars, and have good content and time just disappear into the noise?  

Where's Whitney?

For example, would it matter if a Whitney Houston (pick your own singer here) was singing in a stadium full of people from the stands with no microphone?  Without the microphone no one would even hear her, even a few people away.  How would singing from within the mob help her rise to the top?  I don't see that happening in the stands!

Steemerican Idol

Is Steemit a live ongoing American Idol, or is it more like a Walmart on Black Friday morning?  Steemit is kind of a free for all, with everyone showing up to audition, with the whales being the Simon Cowells, and later the audience gets to vote... either way Simon makes most of the money!  Then you get a few idols that are promoted along with them, ultimately the dollar value goes to those who run the show, not the people that are watching it.

In Conclusion

Starting  your own blog for something you love on your own domain and building it organically by offering genuine quality content that people value does not require Steem.  In fact, Steem could end up giving you a reason not to even try.  

If you already have a following or a business, it probably wouldn't hurt to put it on Steem, but ultimately, whether you start on Steem, or just decide to branch out your existing store there, there is no elevator to the success, you have to to take the stairs!