your absolutely right....I have a very simple financial solution.....
2 parts:

(1) - just add 1 line sponsorship to each page view (with a link) no ads though, they can advertise on their own site. would solve the monitary shortfall in no time.

They will need location & category control info but that can be very easy. So local small mom & pops can sponsor. Like your local tavern for the Rugby Blog. Or your local hair salon for a Glamor blog. Or local junk yard for a scrappers blog

Part (2) SteemIt needs to be a separate entity then Steem.

A Kickstarter/GofundMe account needs to be started to raise funds for starting a new open source company to:

1. mange the code base
2. pay for cloud servers to start
3. pay a small stipend + tokens for a couple of leaders (not Bosses)
   to create an advisory committees to determine development and migration needed in the short, medium and long term, And set a public schedule with goals, and possible solutions.
4. pay a small stipend + tokens for a few witnesses to upgrade and run Masternodes
5. pay a small stipend + tokens laisons to a crowdsourced group of programmers to achieve the ends
6. pay a small stipend + tokens laisons to incentivize the community to adopt the new company as their own baby, not just a site that gives lip service to it. There are many creative people to help out with technical writing, artists to work on revamping and expanding the interfaces, technical people to lend their services, people to host events in concert with entities, and everyone to work their social media magic.

That's how you turn this stuff around!