Hi @wheresthemapinfo. You really express heads on what most of new users go through when they join the steemit community. You start very excited about the potential and the concept of it. Just to loose your enthusiasme when your posts do not get any attention or value.

I have joined steemit 2 weeks ago and I think there are two things that are paramount on this platform.

1. Without steempower, there is no way of developpment on steemit. If you have steempower you can upvote your own post to give it some value, to make it stand out of the 0.00 $ posts.
2. In the long term only a solid relational base of followers will allow you to improve the number of visits and the values of your posts. So I reduced the number of posts that I write and concentrate mainly on commenting and upvoting interesting posts like yours.

I think the usage of bots in an appropriate manner is quite mandatory for minnows on steemit. You can get free upvotes with the MSP that helps to push minnows to get startet. You just have to join the discord channel, register by sending 0.001 sbd (which you will get back) and then you can ask for a free upvote every 48 hours. Each of these upvotes will bring your post around 0.1 $ value. A post with even a small value will get much more attention than the 0.00 $ posts.

Hope this will help you to get through your motivation problems ;-)

Best regards
Achim