These are common issues for new users... Yes, the Trending page is full of whales and a ton of people only upvote because they smell money. The rich get richer and the poor keep on dreaming.. It frustrated me to no end. I have since stopped playing that game, and instead started to completely ignore the Trending page. I don't upvote people on there, it's a waste of voting power.

Instead, I scroll through the New posts in the categories that I like, and see if I can connect with people there. Kind of like how I stumbled on this post of yours and am now replying to it. And you know what? It's actually made this whole experience a ton more fun. I have 300+ followers and it took a month and 800+ posts (mostly commenting) to get there. And it has been more rewarding monetarily too, because people will usually appreciate and enjoy the social interaction and the fact their post doesn't get drowned without views! I have been pleasantly surprised by 50 cent upvotes or more, unexpectedly, by simply engaging others.

But now that I've connected with a few people,I am starting to notice that my posts are getting seen too. While I make nowhere near the amount of money per post as any whale or dolphin, I'm kind of getting a kick out of the fact that some of my posts have indeed made a dollar or two. Long story short: Steemit takes about a month of dedicated friend-making and networking to get a foot in the door. But it does slowly seem to snowball into a bigger ball. My expected earnings for the next 7 days are twice as much as I earned the week before, and those are higher than the week before that.

So keep at it... forget about the money, just focus on making friends and getting followers! Once you show up in people's feeds and you write things that they like, you'll be getting more attention too!

I'll help you out by following you and upvoting your post. If you want, you can follow me too! I am trying to be an honest Steemian, so no spam or abuse from me. I blog mostly about crypto related things.