I'm in the same boat. I've had one single post that made around $400, then nothing for the rest.. well, not nothing, but we're talking cents, not dollars.

I'm happy to stick around. I enjoy reading some of the stuff coming through, and steemit has introduced me to the world of crypto, so I'm learning a lot.

It does appear to be a bit of a lottery as to what ends up on the trending page. I mean, you can bank on @dollarvigilante always trending, and peeps like that, but I've read some great content that fails to get noticed. Maybe the publishing time has something to do with who sees it, unless of course you're already famous/have many followers ready to pounce on whatever you post.