While I completely understand the frustration of not getting votes or Steem for original work you put a lot of effort into, I have to say my 3 highest pay outs were original content. The first was an article about the drug scene in Dublin and the other 2 were chapters of a book I'm currently writing. Keep writing original content and it will eventually pay off.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You may have noticed I'm VERY new here, so I unerstand why you'd think I was referring to my posts. Maybe subconsciously I am peeved a bit. But, truthfully, it stems from scrolling from my feed and observing that the highest rated posts were really trivial while some of the best written things I've seen barely registered. Again, I'm really new and this is my first opinion. I was just concerned by the pattern I've seen