I've been doing posts with quality and to promote the steemit platform. For example this last post below and although it's my best paid post so far, I see post that have no value in content reaching even higher amounts... but that's the game we have now...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@brunopro/famous-quotes-revisited-number-one-william-steemitspeare-promotional-for-social-media
I think it's more luck and having whales as friends... but we're all in the beginning of this adventure right? :)
yeah, gotta keep in mind that value is subjective. It doesn't matter if we agree with the voters or not. We just speak for ourselves and accept that others value things differently than us. I don't like most top40 pop music but I never say that it's without value because millions of other people out there disagree with me and are voting with their dollars.