I'll just add a bit from my personal experience. At the beginning, what frustrated me most was that I would put work into a post, then nothing happened. Not just no money rewards, but also no response in upvotes or comments. Like posting into thin air. Made me feel a bit stupid, as if I obviously wasn't posting good content or didn't know how the platform worked.
The zero response part was the worst, and I think if a community could add a bit to newcomers feeling heard, then that could help. Not just a bot giving a reply, but someone who actually read the post and gives some feedback. Maybe even a tip and a top, something that's cool about the post and something that might help increase the quality and/or visibility of it.
Actually making that work would involve a lot of effort probably. Or maybe there are smart ways to go about it. Anyways, that's just what comes to mind after reading your post :).
I think your experience is very common. As a matter of fact there is a post made by @whatsup that I'm sure she will be happy to share. She shows how 95 of her posts made 0.00 - Now, thats not a pretty number by all means, and most would have given up at half that number.
Thanks! Your comment led me to one of @whatsup posts that had an amazing thread, so many comments that helped me get connected to others on Steemit who are doing what they can to grow their accounts and support the community. Was an awesome find. Gave her a follow for more posts and experiences she has to share, thanks for the tip!
And thank God I didn't have to go through 90 posts with zero payout. I was actually really lucky to get curated a lot by curie, from the very beginning. Which I had no clue of at first, then the difference in payouts made no sense. But definitely initiatives like @curie made all the difference for me to stay put on this platform...