Entering competitions is a reasonably bad and possibly expensive way to improve one’s skills. A better way, imo, is a multi-prong approach:
Learn your camera well and understand how various settings affect your shots
Read about the parameters of good photography
Find a group of photographers whose work you like and seems to be good to be willing to spend time to critique your work.
Decide what you like - and why. If others don’t like what you like, understand why.
Take many, many photos and analyze what makes some ‘good’ and others not so good.
Ignore people who give you ‘empty’ praise or criticism. People should know why they like/dislike something. If they don’t know, they can’t teach.
No. The comment you are under has hit it right on the button. Many/ most people can reach a certain level of competence just by practice but only very few have enough artistic talent to make great pictures.