Steemit is a work in progress. Things change. For example, there used to be financial rewards for contributing to market liquidity, but bots gamed the system so it was removed.

If you spend time researching you can gather information. However, things change; Steemit isn't carved in granite.

Here is a summary: post original good content, upvote good original content and maybe you will get paid Steem and Steem Power. Chances are you will be paid $0. My experience was that after doing a few posts, some money (Steem) came in.

The cyber world under the post and vote for pay runs deep. The open source Steem blockchain allows one to do whatever you want with it. Here are some simple examples: http://steemtools.com/