RE: My first weeks on steemit: my findings - the good & the bad
Payouts seem to be totally random for users who have lower reputation. The more reputation you have the bigger chance you have of getting bigger payouts. And to get bigger reputation you need big payouts or many payouts. Personally I've posted about one article a day, for 3½ weeks if I'm not mistaken. And more than 300 posts altogether. But my reputation remains at 41. The weirdest thing is that I'm not spamming. I actually put thought into my content and create quality, even if I say so myself. Actually it is quite easy to say so with so many plagiarized things and other spam around here. Well, just need to keep on it. However, now I'm starting to run out of ideas and notice that I'm repeating myself and am no where near the reputation I need to be, to reap the benefits of quality posting.
Sadly, I've heard more stories like yours. But on the other hand, I've seen people joining the platform and a week later getting above 100 followers, raking in $50+ per article.
So maybe there's groups out there that support each other, or there's a specific tactic to posting (for example: tagging the right people), or something else. In any case, more research is needed :-).
It's a complex platform, with a few variables to take into account.