The answere is you can't earn a living (not even close to 1$). You see people with 60$, 250$, 500$ earnings on the trending page but the turth is they all buy those promotions where they pay people to upvote them. It is very atractive to see such posts with huge earnings and that gets the people going on steemit but the very truth is you need people with very high steem power to see your post and then they'll only give you a few cents.
On steemit if you get a 5$ worth upvote its much more like a donation not earning for your work because everyone with a lot of steem power will sell their upvotes and if you get one of them you are really lucky and shouldn't belive that you will get another one.
At the end of the day steemit is more a platform for people to post and not to earn as it is advertised. (p.s. i put clickbait in the title.)
-doem