What is Steem's deal? Basically it is a social media platform where you can earn money. However don't be fooled when you see posts which earned more than couple of thousands of dollars cause it takes long time and so much investment to reach that point. So what you should do to get that point is posting frequently. If you are a content creator, you might get that point faster than the others. Now we can describe some basics.
Steem: The difference between Steem and other blockchains is while the others take all produced/mined tokens for the miners/manufacturers, Steem puts most of them to the reward pool. Thus they give rewards to users from this reward pool. How they give these rewards?
75% of the rewards which is collected in reward pool go directly to content creators and curators. 15% is being distributed to people who has STEEM POWER. And 10% goes to "witnesses". Those are the people whom supported by the community and who might help to make blockchain better.
STEEM POWER (SP): It is a measurement unit which shows the effectiveness of a user on netwrok. If you have more SP, your content and your vote will have bigger impact.
Steem Backed Dollar (SBD): It's a token that you can use on Steem Network or in cryptocurrency exchange. When it first launched, it wa equal to 1 dollar. However, now it is almost 4 times more valuable.
How you can earn money here?
As mentioned before, you should create content, and make it frequently. Creating your original contents is a big deal, stay away from plagiarism.
When you post a content, you will get upvotes. You can compare it with 'likes' on twitter or instagram but it is more like Reddit or Medium style. Because of the platforms algorithm, when you have more upvotes you will be more visible. But more importantly you will earn money via those upvotes. In fact, depends on the upvoters 'upvote power' you earn money. And this upvote power is directly related to users SP. If you are a new user, they call it minnows, your upvote power will be almost zero. Mid level users, dolphins, and big fellas, whales, can upvote with a percentage they choose. Cause their upvote power is too big, they use "upvote meter" to choose how much they want to give.
Your STEEM POWER won't be decrease because of Upvote. However, to prevent the abusing of upvotes, there is an algorithm they use and every upvote you make reduces your upvote power. When upvote power becomes '0', you can still give upvotes but it will be an empty one. Owner of the content can't make money out of it.
Now, you make a post, it gets upvotes and comments. What is next? You will have a choice while posting your content. Rewards: Power Up, Default or Decline Payout. When you choose Power UP, you will use all your earnings (except curation share. I will explain it in next paragraph) for STEEM POWER and you use them later.
When you choose Default, It means you will get half of your earning as STEEM POWER and other half can be convert into money.
Decline payout is almost never used cause with choosing this, you decline to earn anything.
There is an amount written under your post, it shows the value of the post. However you don't get all of them. A small amount of money goes to curators who upvoted or commented your post. Approximately 80% of the total amount will be yours and 20% will be distributed to curators.
These are the basics you should know when you sign up for Steemit. I will write more details later on.