you can earn some, put you probably need to put a little more effort in, and you also need some luck.

you should start with a proper post tagged #introduceyourself where you tell the community more about yourself (probably link to other social media accounts and mention steemit there) to prove you're not a bot, sockpuppet or astroturfer.

then, there are many known and valid criticisms of steemit, not everything that glitters is gold here.

but it has some basic ideas that are valid: active users become implicitly stakeholders of the platform, and the whole platform might one day become as valuable as reddit, which is what attracts investors.

this speculative aspect is where your prospective rewards ultimately come from.