In my modest opinion, there should not be anything new to add more reputation for users. There should just be a change in the mind of some users, to know when to accept and upvote, and also downvote (with its justification. But downvotes are necessary).
I have discussed here on Meta several times about the difficulty I see in some people upvoting questions. But thanks to the discussion with a lot of users, I have reached several conclusions, with which I will also refer to your question:
- There are lots of ways to contribute to the community. The first 15 rep can be achieved by editing 7 questions (2 rep per question + 1 initial). And editing is also a contribution. Editing helps questions be more understandable, which also contributes to having a better answer as the question is clearer. I enjoy editing because in that way, even if I do not have the knowledge to answer a question, I am helping users with more knowledge, to answer a clearer question, and I do not make them waste their time in editing that question! It's all a contribution, or as in my country we say: "everyone puts their grain of sand" in the community.
- Upvotes vary in communities: I have also talked about this on Meta. On, for example, Japanese Exchange, the upvote system (the users who vote I mean) have a very different thinking than those on SO. This might be because of the amount of questions/answers(?), which I do not know. But any question with effort and research, gets upvoted, because your contribution to the community is nice! But you should not get flustered. You have made a question to get an answer and to help future users with a problem similar to yours. If you answer something, it can happen that it does not get upvotes nor acceptance, but it is the correct answer. Don't get flustered. You have contributed to the community. That answer helped the user (he might have forgotten to upvote it/accept it), and the answer will help other users in the future!
- Long term contribution: I have seen that the older the question is, usually, the more upvotes and interaction it has. More answers with more upvotes each answer. And I find it logical. The more the questions there are, the more people they have reached. I sometimes find myself searching for a problem, and getting to an answer from 4 years ago. Was it useful? I upvote it.
- Other kinds of contribution: By not getting flustered, you'll feel more comfortable in the community. You'll make better questions, better answers, and you'll edit more. And once you can review, you will review if you have the time and find it appealing. I myself like reviewing even though I've got some bans for bad reviewing. I keep learning from my mistakes to make my reviews better, and that implies, make my contributions better.
So in my opinion, you should not get flustered. This does not only happen to you (low rep user). I asked a question to a user that was in the moderation election phase (really high rep user), and asked him exactly that: what was he going to do about people not upvoting.
His answer was clear: he could not change the mind of everyone, but he always upvoted if something was useful, showed research, etc, and sometimes even added "Even though I do not know the answer, this question was useful and showed effort, so I upvoted it!", and he encouraged me to do the same. He also made answers or questions that did not have any upvotes, and that could not be changed. The change had to come from him (from you, from me).
