Hey man, I understand your frustration. I was there about a month ago myself.
Thing about being a Steemian minnow (which I still am, albeit a fast growing one), is that you gotta be willing to create fresh, new invigorating content with a 100% possibility of it not being noticed. That's the sad part. This happened to me several times during the last couple of posts. Then I started turning it around for myself.
Here's my expert tips for you, since I've gotten to know quite a few dolphins, influential ones since I got here. Keep in mind they might not work as well for you as they did for me since I post different kinds of content, and two of my posts recently made up to a hundred dollars each, which was a fanboy moment for me. Literally felt like a high, I was that excited :D
Here they are:
Always use lots of pictures, and always credit them with the place or person you took them from. Also, the first pic or video in any post is the thumbnail people see when they spot your post in any list, so make sure you choose an enticing one and work it into your design. You gotta market your work well.
Curate as much as you can without completely exhausting your voting weight and bandwidth. You can check the amounts of both here: steemd.com/@coryrayleslie80
I dunno about bandwidth, but the vote weight recharges 20% every 24 hours, gradually, so use it wisely.
My technique for curation is to curate once every two days, but in each session, select one or two good posts from the Home, New and Hot sections of Steemit (per section), and then draw any three Followers of mine and choose three posts each to curate (understandably, I expend a lot of SP in this process, hence the one day wait), and make sure I upvote and comment constructively on any of their posts that I think are good, personally, even if they are not to my tastes.
Remember, you also get a share of the rewards for curation, so keep at it. Doesn't mean too much to you now, (although it does for those you do it for), curation becomes very lucrative once you become a dolphin (meaning you have at least a 1000 SP in your wallet).
Try and create as much original content as possible, which comes directly from you, and interact with other Steemians as much as possible as well. Go to the Steemit chat, and find like minded people, or people who like your work. Get noticed.
Build a follower base. The more followers you have, the more your rep increases, and the more likely your post is to show up on their Home tabs, and get noticed.
However, don't do follow-trades. Only follow those you genuinely think you like. I fell into this particular trap early on. It drops your standing with the more high-ranking members of the community, and those are the people you want to impress, cause they hold a lot of voting power.
Participate in contests. These are constantly patrolled by whales and dolphins for quality content, and if you're lucky (which most people usually are), you'll get noticed and it'll give you a boost. Don't pay too much attention to the prizes. Just focus on getting noticed. Its what'll build your rep and people's awareness of you. Two you can try are the Minnows Accelerator Project run by @accelerator and the Spotlight Contest. I have yet to compete in the second one, but I hear its good.
I noticed you're an eight day old account, so I can also understand where this frustration is coming from, but as grave as it sounds, you gotta understand that success on Steemit doesn't come overnight. You're gonna toil away fruitlessly a lot before you see results. You just gotta stick with the grind initially. It's a very slow process, but its ultimately extremely rewarding. Its one of the best long term investments of my time and energy I've made recently.
Lastly, don't get discouraged when your posts don't do as well. Your posts are good content, just aren't getting noticed by the right folk. So take the initiative, participate in contests and get it noticed. Being seen in action by the right people is everything a minnow needs here on Steemit.
Hope my tips help, and have a good day. And happy Steeming :D
P.S: In case you would like to check out my work and style, here's my newest post. Got a ton of upvotes, and its easily my best piece yet:
https://steemit.com/physics/@callistanix/fortuitous-perspicacity
Good luck with your Steemit endeavours.
Cheers =D