I have personally written a couple welcome articles, with links to things others have written as well:
Welcome to Steemit! Here Are Some Suggestions to Help You Get Started.
Welcome to Steemit! Here Are Some Tips for Internet Etiquette
Also, check out my alternate account @goodguygreg. It exists to resteem helpful posts by various Steemians and to support cool stuff I think has been unfairly flagged. There aren't many posts there, so it should be easy to navigate.
I will check them out. Also, I went to your alternative account and one of ur posts the potential payout is 338 or something like that.... have you actually received any of that ?
That post was "resteemed." Someone else wrote it, I upvoted & resteemed it with this account because it was interesting, and due to the flags on what I deemed a high-quality post I brought GGG in to upvote and resteem as well. GGG will receive a small sum of Steem Power for its support, but it has so little voting weight that this reward will be negligible.
The more you "power up," the more your vote boosts the payout on other posts, and the more reward you get for supporting things. There are other factors at play, but that's the rough mechanism.