I was going to write an email for my old artist friend @skovclaude, who just joined Steemit - but then I though that these advices and explanations might be generally useful.

Steem, SteemPower and SBD

You might have understood that you can earn money on Steemit, but what kind of money?

First of all you have to understand that your account really is a wallet. This wallet can hold two types of money: Steem and Steem dollars (SBD).

Steem - is the main currency of the Steem blockchain. It is like Dollar, Pound, Euro, and its value will like these fluctuate. In this moment of writing the Steem is worth $0,275

SBD - Steem dollars is another currency that is supposed to always be worth one dollar, and which can be exchanged to Steem based on current Steem value.

When just being in the wallet these two currencies can be sent to any other Steem wallet without any fee. You can use it as payment, you can exchange it for other crypto currencies (for a fee) or you can sell each of the two for the other at the internal marketplace.

The Steem can also be converted to Steem power.

SteemPower - is the Steem you invest in the platform. The more you have in this state the more will your upvotes be worth. If you need to withdraw these funds it will take you some time. Under the current system and the time of writing it will take 13 weeks. This process is called power down.

Voting power

You do not have unlimited votes. You start with 100 percent and for each vote your percentage will decline with 2%. If you reach 0% it will take you one week to refill the voting power. When you get wealthier (in Steem Power) you will be able to vote only fractions of a whole vote... bat by ten you will probably have understood the system.

You can check how much voting power you have many places... but not on Steemit.com :) here are two links:

https://steemnow.com/@katharsisdrill
https://steemd.com/@katharsisdrill

Exchange katharsisdrill with your own username.

My advice to what you should do

1. Power up all our Steem - If you want to use this place invest in it. At a later point this might be a place where you can make a living, but right now it is an experiment that need all the good content makers it has to grab power and change this for the better. See it as an investment in the future.
2. Make sure your voting power never is 100% - That would mean you have valuable votes that are not used... and therefore lost.
3. Only use 20% voting power a day - if you vote every day your voting power should not go below 90%, if you vote every second day your voting power should not go below 80%
4. Be active, especially with the comments. This is the best way to make people notice you.
5. Do not worry too much about making money - poor sods like yourself will have to work hard and then stupid investors and people gaming the system will earn much more than you without lifting a finger.