You may be looking at the homepage of Steemit with your bug eyes and salivating mouth thinking "thousands of dollars for a simple post??" Although yes, some of it is liquid and valuable, I have been seeing many posts of people confused about how the payout works for Steemit. This is a TL;DR on realistic Steemit payouts:
50% of the total amount of money is available as Steem Dollars, available for immediate liquidation at the time of writing 1 to $0.90 on Poloniex. The other 50% is in Steem Power, which unlocks and vests over 104 weeks.
Assume you're receiving half of what the total number shows. 1 Steem Dollar is also currently worth $0.90 USD.