The problem is that none of the quests are available at levels in which you're broke and really need items worth a pittance

Gil in FFXIV is very easy to get, even just doing normal guildleves and selling crystals/shards. This determines the fact that giving items that can be bought with gil (probably saving a lot of time) equals to giving a prize of little worth.

About bigger/more unique quests, they already stated that sidequests are only one kind of the quests they're going to implement. There will be different sets with different levels of breadth.

After all it's logical that they implemented first the ones that take less time to implement. Others like company quests and such (the infamous "quests that involve the danger faced by Eorzea") will come later.