I've wondered about people complaining about how hard it is to get new posts seen as a newbie myself, and for the reason you state. On any blog you expect it to be crickets except for however much you promote your post by linking to it in other places or paying to "boost" it.

I think the thing with Steemit that makes people have a different expectation (so be disappointed) is that this is a mashup between a blog and social media. On your own website, you know no one is seeing your article if you don't drive them there to see it. But on Facebook, for example, you only joined because you had friends on there. So there was a ready made audience and the FB algorithm intentionally showed your posts to new friends a lot for quite some time.

Here on Steemit there is the expectation of an experience like FB because it is on a platform, not one's own website. But there is no algorithm here sending people to you! And for most of us there isn't a friend/family network already here to "introduce us around." Friends of friends aren't suggested for us to follow. In general, it's a lot like having a blog on your own website, even though it's hosted on a platform. We should feel grateful we have the chance to have articles seen at all before we have collected followers.