The quality of one's post really matters. If your friend can't create really good content, getting to the "Hot" or "Trending" pages of Steemit can be really harmful.

If your friend created posts featuring only images he or she got from the internet with no other type of content involved, like text and valuable information, then there's no surprise he or she didn't receive any money (because of low ratings).

Plus, the way I see it he or she used the "#introduceyourself" tag for that post because it's a popular tag and everyone knows it. That's not how you do things.

The "hot" and "trending" pages of steemit can be the best and the worst place your post can get. If you get to those sections with a great post, that's amazing because a lot of people will see it and a lot of people may upvote it.

If you get there with a bad post just because you're really lucky, a lot of people will see it, realize your post is bad and give it low ratings (by flagging it).

Next time your friend tries to publish something and wants to get some money, he or she can try to provide more than just a few pictures you can easily find online.

If we could all make money like that, we would all be rich and this website would give money to every person who knows how to save a picture from Google :)