I am just at the beginning of the same journey that you are on, and your post sadly supports what I suspect: simply having decent content and posting often just isn't enough in many cases.

I learned about Steemit through a newspaper article, and I'm not terribly informed on crypto and all that, but I thought, "why not?" Worst case scenario it could be a time waster, best case scenario I could actually make a bit of money, since I have the time.

Well, about a month in (not a lot of time, I realize), I am finding out that many or most of the popular posts are quite amateurish, spamish, or really quite similar to what I post, and I don't completely understand why they are popular. I use Reddit quite a bit, and popular posts there are popular for a reason. On Steemit, there seems to be no rhyme or reason why some posts are popular and some are not.

My plan is to continue my blog, just for fun, and see if it eventually turns popular, or just becomes a largely unpopular journal of my stuff. But, like you, I plan to continue to see where this journey goes.

Good luck to you!