You're not wrong at all. A minnow simply cannot make it unless they get lucky and get big exposure on a post. It's all about the circle jerks people have upvoting each other and using bots to upvote your posts. My posts look like they're worth more, but I also buy votes on every one of them. Use bots like @smartmarket where it's guaranteed to make a profit. Say you send 2 sbd, get an upvote for 4 sbd, then you'll get 2 sbd back and the other half will build your steem power. That's not exact but you get the idea. Give your firefighting blog a try, buy votes, and see what happens. You won't get rich, but if you can start growing your account then that also attracts new followers (even though a lot of them are bullshit and never comment/vote).
PS - love the tag use strategy