New users may be blinded by the great payouts you see on the trending page and try to publish as much as possible to earn money and get there too as fast as possible. Actually this was how I was thinking in the beginning. But I realized that the real value lies in the interaction and networking with others.

It's all about adding value to the community. This can be done with an own post or by commenting other posts in a useful way. I made a few bucks just by providing some additional information or asking good questions in the comments.
I also think that I gained more attention and followers by commenting then by publishing my own posts.

Technically speaking there isn't even a difference between posts and comments. For the blockchain everything is a comment. A blog post is just a 1st level comment.

So... there are two ways of getting started on steemit.com:

1. Create great content yourself.
2. Look for great content by others and participate.