Improvement Suggestions for the Steemit Interface

I registered on Steemit about half a year ago. Excited about the new social media platform that could even ~get you paid~, I made my account with ecstatic hopes about making some (relatively) easy money.

We all now know that that isn't how Steemit really works. Earning here does require commitment and (in most cases) quality work, yet not many people are able to keep up the habit. I think a large factor for this is the interface itself. Though Steemit users are really friendly (well, you have to be in order to earn anything here..), the board can seem very inaccessible, without a place for clear guidelines for all of the features of Steemit. Yes, there is some sort of a manual page when you log in, yet many answers are not found there and quite honestly, even after registering on Steemit, I had no idea how the platform really functions (and not even mentioning the complex social games that often seem to take place..). Sure, you can use the search function to find out posts about certain features or strategies to use Steemit, yet these get old fast. The funny thing is also that you cannot even support these age-old posts because their 7-day time frame for earning rewards has been long gone.

What is the point of writing posts and making good content if no one really even wants to read it? If posts can make money for only 7 days, and votes are of more worth when you are one of the first ones to vote, what follows is that people will only look at newer posts, and not pay attention to your old ones - oh, and why would they really even be paying attention to what you actually made, if all they (also) want is to get paid?

Don't get me wrong - I love Steemit and believe it has a good future, yet there are some improvements that could be made to make the board easier accessible and convenient for both new and older users. Though it's hard to fix all of the problems (as the feature of being able to earn by voting/getting votes will indefinitely be (at least one of) the motivation(s) for people to keep engaged in this community, I think some minor improvements could at least make the site a bit more engaging and fun for users. One of them I think would be increasing the vote worth of new users and making it possible to vote also on older posts. (Now, whether this is technically possible, I don't know, but I'm just throwing my idea in case it is.)

Even the interface itself does look a bit plain and sparse, which can make it even more confusing to find whatever you are looking for. The search function could be made a bit more functional if you could classify whether you want to find posts by author, keyword or tag. For the post view, I personally would really like it if you could get a better view of many posts by being able to choose between a grid/traditional post view with the posts lined up like they now are. Even though I think the line-up is nice especially for posts from your own feed, it would be easier and faster to scroll through the new posts with a grid-view. This way you would be easier able to spot interesting-looking new posts. It would also be very helpful if different types of posts (posted from another app/only photo/article etc.) could be filtered, so that it would be easier to find the type of posts you are looking for.
Another thing which would be really nice is if you could customize your own profile page more and maybe even add an intro column for who you are that could be viewed next to your posts in the posts view window. Right now everything has to be included in one post and it's both time consuming and aesthetically not pleasing, as well as confusing for the person trying to find the info.

These are some of the improvements I could think of and would appreciate a lot. Like I said, I love the platform and appreciate everything it has given to me, yet improving it would be good for the whole community involved. Thus, I wanted to throw my two cents in there in case anyone finds it worthy.

Thank you!