Hello,

Since a friend of mine has started here, I offer some some tips for him and all the other newbies:

Be patient!

Anyone who starts with Steemit and has no followers, will have a hard time. He / she will possibly write good posts and invest a lot in it, but they may not reap a single upvote. This quickly leads to frustration. So my advice: Do not shoot your ammunition at the beginning. Stay tuned and collect a few followers before you put a lot of energy into the posts.

Create Contacts

You now have the "hen - egg" problem: without followers, posting is no fun and no fun leads to no good posts and therefore to no new followers.
Followers are obtained by reading articles and writing comments within the categories that interest you. Stay in contact with these people. Responds regularly. Get in touch with people who interest you.

Distribute upvotes

As a beginner, you have 15 borrowed Steempower (to be seen under Wallets, there stands at Steempower +15.000) and still no own. This means that if you give an upvote to someone, She/he get credited about 0.005 Steemdollar. That's next to nothing. So the recipient does not even see any money growth.
But she/he sees your goodwill. And that counts a lot here. With every Steem you receive in your Steempower, the loaned portion shrinks until you have virtually paid off your debts. When you reached about 30 Steempower, the upvote receiver then gets a cent to see. That's not much, but visually it makes a decisive difference.

Earn Money

You get Steem credited for each upvote you distribute (Curation Reward) and for each upvote you receive (Author Reward).
Curation Rewards are high when you upvote a post that is still fresh and is then being upvoted by many others. Remember, however, that your voting power decreases by 2% with each vote, and your voting power grows by 20% per day. With that, you have about 10 posts to distribute in this period. You should take advantage of that. Give upvotes for the posts of the people that interest you, but also for your own articles. Do not give an upvote for your own comments, that's selfish.
You get author rewards by the upvotes of others. It depends on how much Steempower they have. This makes the game exciting, because you never know in advance who is passing by.
After 7 days you can pick up your money under "Wallet". Remember that the profit of a post is distributed as follows:
25% goes back to the curators (upvoters).
75% will be distributed 50/50 in your Steemdollar and Steempower.
With the Steemdollar you can "go shopping", the Steempower makes your upvotes more valuable. You can exchange both.
You can also exchange the Steemdollar on a stock exchange for FIAT money (eg., Dollar) and transfer to your bank account.

To Write An Article

Let's go. Write good posts. Do not get discouraged. As mentioned, at the beginning you should expect that only a few will read it. (You can use your posts in the future, if it is worthwhile, slightly modified again ;-))
Write about your topics. Try to find yourself.
Use 5 tags if possible, but keep in mind that they have to fit, otherwise people will avoid you. The first tag is the most important. If you write in German, "german" should definitely be one of the tags.
Write regularly. The more you write the more people see you, but the more people you "annoy" too. Therefore, try to stay "in rhythm" so that the followers can keep pace with you.
Rough recommendation from me: Write at least one article per week and max. 4 a day. If you ever have a "flow", just put a few posts "on heap" and distribute them later.
Write on different topics to see what arrives at which audience.
Respond to all comments and give upvotes to the comments of the others - that seems generous.
Always add pictures that somehow fit into your posts, even if it's just a link to a picture on the internet (which will then be displayed as a picture in the post). But do not infringe any copyrights (i.e. by copying texts without source information or downloading foreign images, which are then uploaded here).
Learn how to use the Markdown Styling Guide.

Use Bots

Sometimes you'll get 0.001 Steem, with a promotional comment in it, transferred to your wallet. There, so-called "bots" (but sometimes even real people) draw attention to themselves and offer you to resteemen your articles to be distributed to a large audience. That is legitimate. I also like to use that when I'm convinced that an article is really good and should be shown to a wide audience.
However, that is a bit risky.

Read The FAQs

Learn to understand Steemit. It is very extensive. It's like a good game: The basic rules are simple but the more you play, the more questions arise. Search for answers and you'll get better.
Top right, in the three lines next to your profile picture, are the FAQs.

Look How Other Successful People Blog

Some people earn over 1000 Steemdollar per blog here. We are far away from that. But look at what they do differently than we do. Learn from the pros. Adapt some of their style (not the content, this is automatically punished by the "Cheetah-Bot") and experiment with it.

Dealing With Whales

Whales are the people who have an incredible amount of money in Steempower (sometimes over millions of dollars). These have according Voting Power and can make you with one upvote several 100 SBD richer. But they usually don't do it. Nevertheless, it happens that a thicker fish swims by and leaves just 10 SBD. This will give the beginner a good kick. Then you thank him in the comments and think about, what has caused the whale to upvote you.
Personally, I am very happy about such upvotes, but I think you should not invest too much in them. Most whales are loners, or swim in other waters. Let's grow up ourselves, then we see them more often. Much more important, I think that we should take care of the small fishes. They need our help, and we grow automatically when we support them.

Link Your Posts In Other Platforms

If you use other social media platforms (facebook, twitter, whatsapp,...), then post a link to your steemit posts there.
Indeed, you don't get upvotes, but you promote Steemit. People get curious and if you repeat it often enough, they will register.
Also you get a wider audience. And you never know who resends what.
There are also some discord chats, where you can attend.

If I have forgotten something essential or you disagree, please answer me in the comments.

Regards, Achim