You joined at the same time as us, sure, but it looks like you only started being active when the price and subsequently blogging difficulty went us. Many of us have stuck with Steem and believed in it through the hard times. When the price hit $0.10 virtually everyone left. There were only a few hundred of us who stuck around, and we gained large followers and were rewarded a significant portion of the reward pool. That went on for nearly 6 months before Steem started growing again. The reward pool is the same in terms of Steem Power rewarded, and it was really easy to get to the Trending page. Now the blogging difficulty and competition is way up, it's much harder to get the same kind of attention.
It's the same as mining difficulty, really. Those who were early to Bitcoin and Ethereum mining could make accumulate thousands of coins. At they time they were worthless, but if you were patient, you would be a millionaire now.
The lesson to learn is - Be patient, be persistent, be early. Keep engaging with the community, if your content is good you'll eventually get some attention. All the best!
its also about finding it early which can be done to luck and then taking action