Most people wouldn't upvote their own comments though after the recent changes, more people started doing it as it is a relatively simple way to "game the system". I personally (and I've seen many other express the same sentiment) do this quite rarely and I don't think it's the best type of behavior for the future of the platform as a whole.

The idea of steemit is to be a social network and if everybody is saving their limited amount of votes for themselves, they are practically decreasing their interaction with the community and decreasing the value that they bring to it all.

Voting first or last doesn't affect the rewards directly, so it's the same type of taking advantage of the system.

Still, since you are a brand new member and the delegated steem power you are currently using to power up your votes will "leave" your account in a month, this might be considered an investment you are making in your future here. I'm still not a fan of the practice and I think that if you leave insightful comments (which I've seen you do) authors wouldn't mind upvoting them and that will foster engagement and will still help you build your account.

Making a piece of text a link is not very hard here.

This is an example:
[Markdown Styling Guide](https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/)

This is the syntax:
[text](link)

This is how it turns out in practice:
Markdown Styling Guide - you'll find more at the link ;)