It's hard to understand how it works, i'm a little frustrated myself about it. From what I know about it, it seems if you're posts are the most popular and upvoted, you gain steem and steem power. The "whales" make the biggest difference. If they upvote your posts, you will gain more from them. "whales' being the people with accounts high in steem, and steem power. It's a very interesting system steem has, and kinda hard to move up in power, without the whales approval. lol