I feel your frustration. Steemit can feel like YouTube in the way you can spend considerable time crafting a short film or documentary, only to find it totally eclipsed in terms of likes, audience figures and Google ad payments by some person's clip of their dog falling off a sofa that took no talent at all to upload.
I do not have much advice about being successful. If I were you I would just concentrate on stuff that is meaningful to you and worth spending time on.
That's it, that's the key. :) Just do what you love, it's very likely you will find an audience. You have just made a few posts @thepoet, you have to be more persistent.