Steemit is like a Hydra - an ecosystem with many heads. You can earn tons of Steem with the platforms 
Busy.org - Steemit's Little Sibling
Steem Power: 223K (Check)
Busy was one of the first new platforms next to Steemit. It was developed with a more mass market friendly user experience in mind. Steemit is complicated. Busy tries to simplify it with a different User Interface but the same content. On Busy you also got the upvote slider right from the start while on Steemit it requires 500 Steem Power to be activated.
To get rewarded by Busy all you need to do is post from there and use the tag #busy as one of your five possible tags. It doesn't have to be the first. The upvote weight you receive on your post depends on the combined Steem Power of all your followers. The more they have the higher your upvote will be. You can only receive an upvote once a day.
dMania - Share Funny Memes
Steem Power: 622K (Check)
On dMania you can share Memes like funny animated GIFs, pictures with text and videos. It is as simple and straightforward as that. You have no body text for your post and only the visual content. Browsing through the contributions is very clear with no further disctracting elements. And upvoting has a cool count up animation.
The clou of dMania is the sponsorship model. With that 15% of all author rewards are collected and returned to the Steem Power delegators. So if you want to support this platform you can become a delegator yourself and earn some Steem Power with it. To get rewarded by dMania you have to be selected manually by the
DTube - The Fastest Growing Steem Platform
Steem Power: 1.033K (Check)
The decentralized video platform has transformed itself within a few months into an expontentially growing driver for recruiting new Steemians. Many just create a Steemit account to get access to DTube. And rightfully so: The website is delivering a stable service and intuitive user experience by combining the Steem blockchain with the Inter Planetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized file sharing system. This allows for a unique opportunity to spread video content censorship free and moneytize it more effectively than with the market leader. You are sharing 25% of all author rewards with the platform to support its development and server costs.
With one million Steem Power they are actively upvoting much of the video content every day. Receiving just a 5-10% upvote can be worth a tremendous amount and is often paired with many more upvotes following from the DTube and Steemit connections. The best videos even receive huge upvotes and dominate the Steemit trending page. However, due to close to one video per minute the battle for attention has already started and will only get more.
DLive - Live-Streaming For Steem
Steem Power: 2.051K (Check)
Still a baby amongst giants but already mightier than most: DLive is offering live-streaming services for the Steem blockchain. You can pair it with the free open-source tool Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) and stream your desktop, webcam, games and whatever your desire. You have a chat window and a donation button and your stream will be highlighted on the front page while being live.
The potential for this behemoth is massive but currently the page is still in its infancy and needs more functionality to become the true power house it potentially will be. To earn one of the giant upvotes you can enter their challenges and qualify yourself for it. Check out their profile
Utopian.io - Open Source Rewarded
Steem Power: 3.744K (Check)
The biggest platform on the Steem blockchain in terms of Steem Power and close to DTube in terms of contributions. Here you can earn a massive amount of Steem for contributing to open source projects. Not just Steem-based but any kind of software and tools are valid here and the contributors are earning GUARANTEED upvotes if they successfully follow the rules. A big team of moderators works around the clock to make sure the quality is insured and only deserving post receive the automatic upvotes from the Utopian bot.
Every day the account is upvoting posts with a current value of $10.000 in Steem split between all contributors. You don't have to be a programmer to participate: graphic designers, translators, tutorial writers, bug hunters and more categories are available to choose from. You can even create your very own open source project and find developers and designers to realize it. All parties are greatly rewarded by the Utopian bot and can proceed without external money.
Conclusion
These five platforms are amazing opportunities to earn some Steem - probably better than Steemit itself. On Steemit you have to compete against all other accounts while on the smaller plaforms you can still find new audiences much faster. Be smart and produce content for one or several of them and kick-start your Steem career by earning some delicious Steem Power yourself.