The monetary rewards assigned to posts are uneven because Steem Power is unevenly distributed amongst the user base. There are only so many whales and dolphins with enough SP to reward posts properly - most of us can only hope to give a cent or two from a 100% upvote, and even then only ten times a day before we run out of voting power.

If people are posting "utter crap" and getting richly rewarded it is because their posts are reaching the attention of the right people and those people like what they are putting out. They might like your work better but they are not seeing it - yet. Keep at it!