Congrats on the first payout, I love seeing the growth in my work every week and those little payouts will add up in time. I followed and upvoted you

Far as the concern for your future here, fret not a thing my friend...it takes a little time for growth but the more proactive you are about content and mingling with the community and growing your following will eventually pay off. I am slowly now getting over that hill thankfully but its taking some seriously unloading of effort. And you can't always bet on content alone I am noticing. Some days I write and flow out some amazing stuff but if I don't promote it, sometimes it only makes change due to the lack of people seeing it. Just got to be persistent and driven to get to your goals, keep that in mind then the sky is the limit with Steemit.

On the side I opened up a page on Facebook for users of Steemit and to attract non users off of FB to Steemit. I will try to hook you up with a solid posting there to get you some followers, concept there is to resteem peoples work to help them out in the community so once we grow I suspect it will be more effective but its not doing too bad for a starter.

Swing by, I will have you post up in a few minutes to hopefully fluff up your follower list some. Keep at it and reap the benefits later, can't stress enough get that Steem Power up constantly, that is key to better payouts down the road.

My page is at:
https://www.facebook.com/steemitbc/