The Good, The Bad, The Voted

I'm struggling to understand how to use Steem and would love people's input/ideas/advice...provided this is even seen by anyone. I came onto steemit with the understanding that it was a content creation platform. The kind of place where you just think about putting ideas out there and if people like it, they upvote it and you can make money. Turns out: that's not how Steem works. As I started writing, I came to the realization that there's a more complex economy at play.

I've challenged myself to write one steem article a day for the next month in an attempt to build a habit of writing and getting my ideas and opinions out there. This article is about my confusions with Steem. If people have answers/suggestions/etc, please feel free to share them in the comments section.

Here are questions I have for the community:

1. Do you have to pay for upvotes in order for your work to be seen? Steem is a weird place in that it's very clear that people are paying for votes, but it's extremely difficult to tell just how rampant such an activity is. Are there successful creators on Steem who don't pay for upvotes? Or must one spend money in order to make money?
2. How exactly does Steem work? When I first joined Steem eons ago, either there was no such thing as Steem Power or I just didn't notice it. There definitely weren't 3000 articles a day pleading for people to vote for the author for "witness". What are witnesses where did they come from and why does everyone want to be one? I don't want to read 1000 word articles about it, I just want to understand in a paragraph. Which brings me to another question:
3. Does it make sense for Steem to be this complicated? It feels like in order to write and be heard, I need to understand the nuances of Steem economy. I need to understand 2 different kinds of cryptocurrency, the concept of voting, and witnesses. Is that true? Does it makes sense for this to be the case?
4. Why are you here? What content do you like on Steem? What brings you back to Steem every day/week/month?
5. How do you find good content? In a world where anyone can pay for their content to be the most popular, how do you find content valuable to you? Are there specific things you look for? How do you feel about the quality of content on Steem and the quality of "popular" content?

This sounds like I'm just complaining about Steem, but that's not my intention. I'm trying to understand and get a footing here.