Forget about the crema. That mostly says something about the freshness of the roasted coffee beans.
I never had this particular machine, but there's one important rule for good espresso: you need a good grinder.
It's one of the most important aspects when making espresso.
Seeing as you're using a cheap grinder, this is what you need to improve if you want to improve your espresso.
Important to note that this is about the mastodon.social instance, not about all of Mastodon