While you may not initially have a major impact financial to the author, your upvote will boost the reputation of the author and validate their effort giving them more confidence that there is an audience for their work.
This is definitely true there are many posts out there but I guess whether it is a quality post or not, it is rather subjective to the audiences as well. I have come across a lot of quality posts which the efforts of the author can really be seen but with little Curation . That's a shame because if only the upvote values are high enough to help them gain visibility, the quality content will be under a wider radar to be found.
@happycrazycon You make a valid point and that is why those with larger account and more steem power should take it upon themselves to ensure they reward quality content when they come across it to encourage the authors of those posts giving them more visibility.