Heyyy, I was just talking about this with my mom!
My Venezuelan friends think I'm already successful, and that's to be expected since they're earning 0.01-0.12 per post, some even going as far as 0.89! I'm instead on the two digits, using promotion bots and getting "lucky" all the time. My explanation each time they ask is, look at the number of comments I've made. I have more than a thousand. At least one of these is going to get noticed, right?
And that's what happened at the beginning. I got a head-start because I commented a bunch and I got put on auto-vote by a bigger voter. I was then able to use this tiny money to increase my bandwidth, I got invited to communities, I learned more about Steemit, and like a river taking me from consequence to consequence, now I'm rep 50 and they're stuck at rep 33.
I'm far from successful, but my ride has been less bumpy because of my persistence. They post once every few days? I try to make the best quality everyday. They post and go to sleep? I post and make comments everywhere to get views. It isn't always successful, but as you said, the best way to go around this is keep trying, and to try a lot. Some lucky shots are bound to come if you throw a 22-faced dice 1000 times.