I've had a similar experience to you in the early days. It was months before I made much Steem, but I concentrated on making it a fun experience as I liked the idea of the platform. People turn up expecting to get paid immediately, but why should they get paid? It is supposed to be about adding value by posting, commenting or curating. I can write a bot that says 'Nicccee post', but that has no value. I could follow 2000 random people, but my feed would not be interesting to me. People happily use other social media sites with no chance of reward because they are entertaining. Steemit can be that too with the bonus of possible rewards. You just have to seek out the interesting people, and they are not necessarily those paying huge sums to get on the trending page. Anything that's really worth while tends to take some work.