"It's safe to say that we're all here for the money, right?"

Not really. When I recommend Steem to friends I'm avoiding that aspect. It's awesome platform like no other and has a lot of great features. Right, rewards too, but it's a lot healthier to treat them like a nice side effect of being here.
In most cases it's about getting some rewards vs no rewards.
Most of us, including me, are not and would not be great content creators. Most of us wouldn't pay their bills by posting their blogs here.
But that's ok.
I'm fine with posting something from time to time, reading and rewarding good content (like yours) and looking at this platform's growth. :-)