It would help to ask a few of those questions. :c)
Are you confused about how some people make hundreds and thousands for churning out inferior content to others who made mere cents months ago? So am I - kinda - but this just means that the Steemit system is far from perfect.
Are you confused about how to get 'any' kind of a reasonable income from your posts? Well... you have the figurative task of growing a garden fit for royals... from a single seed.
You need to plant it - and harvest the seeds - sell excess and trade for other seeds, etc. In other words you need to cultivate your following - by doing a mixture of getting involved on other peoples' posts with thoughtful comments, posting interesting posts of your own, up-voting interesting stuff that you see (especially posts), and overall building your personal brand. Yours appears to be engineering designs. Cool!
Hint: It may be tempting to follow 10000 people ... but that will mean that your feed will be full of all those peoples' contents - probably irrelevant to you - so only follow people whose content you like - and maybe out of respect for some who follow you.
Perhaps you are confused about payouts. Anything you post has a 7 day period for others to up-vote (or flag) it. The more up-voted the better for your payout and your reputation. Reputation is good. Very good.
You will find that some people can churn out substandard content on a regular basis and get paid royalty to do so. Sad but don't focus upon those people. Focus instead upon others like you who are struggling with great content.
What is the point of Steemit? Well... it can mean different things to different people:
Freedom of publishing to a blockchain (although Steemit bullies do exist so this is not perfect).
A means of publishing your day to day thoughts and actually get somethign for it - unlike other social media.
A means of establishing an online identity and getting together with like minded people in a community that is generally quite supportive.
Well... thats all I got for the moment. Hope that helps a little bit. ;c)
Good luck!
Thank you for the advice and your time. Appreciate.
One more thing, I don't even get to see the posts of the people I'm following except I visit their profile.
You are welcome.
To see the feed of the persons you follow you either click on the 'steemit (beta)' image on the top-left corner or click on your image on the top-right corner of the screen and click 'feed'.
When you click 'trending, new, hot, promoted' you see whatever has been posted on Steemit by everybody.
Oh - and one more thing even though it needn't be said its important not to forget to mention it. It may be tempting to plagiarize - but don't. It does not end well. :c) Not saying that you do.