This post is going to be for people who are not on the site yet, it is not written for people who are already here. So if you are reading this and you have never been on this website before, this post is here for you.
So you may have seen posts on this website with a $ amount next to it. This is actual money that people are earning on this website, but no one is actually giving it to them. This website is not like Go Fund Me where people have to give their money to you if they want to help you. On this website, people just click the upvote button (similar to a Like button) and money is generated via a Cryptocurrency called STEEM. So posting on this website is to STEEM what mining is to Bitcoin, so if you post on this website and there is a $ amount at the bottom of your post, then you will be paid that much in STEEM. STEEM can be converted to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin can be sold and the cash can be deposited directly in your account from the website Coinbase.com after the sale. This link shows step-by-step how to do this, and shows proof that cash has been withdrawn.
You can also earn money by posting Comments and Curating Content (Voting on a post before the post gets popular, and Voting on Comments). Steemit is very new, and is still in Beta, meaning that this is not even the finished product but a test product. So once you have been on Steemit for 2 years, there will be a lot more people on here but you will have been around longer so you will have more money in your account, so you will have more voting power. Then once you have been on for 5 years, there will be even more people and you will have more voting power. And in 10 years it will be like Facebook or Twitter and you will have tons of voting power as tons of new people come in. This is the first Cryptocurrency that is offering a simple GUI for users to earn coins, rather than going through the complicated process of mining coins. It has huge staying power, it's just extremely new (July 2016).
There are also 2 ways to get more voting power, and therefor the ability to make more money faster on the website.
Buy STEEM and load up your account:
If someone went and bought $50,000 worth of STEEM (especially if it were worth $0.10 cents each, rather than $1.00 or $2.00 each, because you would get so many more at $0.10 each) and load there Steemit account with $50,000 of STEEM, they would then be able to start voting for other people's content, and posting content, and voting on comments and earn STEEM pretty quickly, and actually help other people get to a point where they have voting power because they have been voted on so many times by someone with that much voting power, and has been getting their votes boosted in rank and getting more votes from other people just because the 1 person who spent $50,000 voted on all their posts. So 1 person buying STEEM can help many people. And just as an example, if you buy $50,000 in STEEM at $0.10 each, and it goes up to $1.00 or $2.00 each, your $50,000 becomes $500,000 or $1,000,000.
Use Steemit as a Group:
Number 1 and 2 can be used together, but this one can be used by people who don't spend money on Steemit also. If you use Steemit as a group, then if 1 person gets a few good payouts, then they can start voting on your posts and help get your posts up in ranking, and you can vote on theirs to help get their post up in ranking, and once both of you have some voting power, you can start giving each other a few cents at a time, and then $0.10 or $0.20 at a time, then eventually $1.00 at a time, and after a few years (depending how large and dedicated your group is) you can all be giving out $10.00 and $50.00 votes. And along the way if a few people spend some money in STEEM, then it can move along faster. But don't forget to buy STEEM as it goes down and when it is low, and then to Sell when it is rising. If you pay extremely close attention to the market there is a time you can buy before it goes up, but generally you only want to buy when it is going down and when it is already low.
And now the YouTube is also not paying that much amount to the people who are making videos so for this the STEEM Wallet has a greater potential to grow.