Awesome to hear you got your first payout! Sounds like a big payout too. To be honest I've been a little skeptical too but hearing stories like these is so cool.

I'm still a little unsure of how this whole thing plays out in the long term but super interested to see what happens here with d-tube and steemit.

I'm new too and not sure I 100% understand this. As for increasing your vote strength (amount of $ for your upvote) it takes a significant increase in steem power. I used my lightcoin to buy steem and power it up, at 112SP I still only get $0.03 upvote.

https://steemnow.com/upvotecalc.html
^ This calculator shows you how much upvote you get for different SP levels. hope that helps.