You'd think, wouldn't you? But check out my blog. There's reams upon reams of amazing stuff in there. Original fiction, informative articles, community focused stuff. I have made just under $100 in total and that's from a few posts that got $10-$30 each. The rest made nothing, or less than a dollar.
If you look at the posts that rake in the big bucks on the front page, they aren't examples of hard work. They are examples of having been born attractive and with two X chromosomes, whales colluding with other whales, and metacontent about Steemit itself that happens to get lucky.
Give it time... the platform continues to re-ballance itself... only 12 hours allowed on the trending page will help vastly... the obscene payments are actually brought about by minnows bandwagoning the trending posts... once these are lessened then there is more of the pot for everyone... when i joined I had many $0.00 posts but I stuck with it.
Thank you for the words of encouragement. :)