There have been many lessons to learn, ups and downs, good and bad with Steemit. I have been on here about 2 months now and my girlfriend joined following about a week behind me. We both posted like crazy for a good month straight and had what I would consider above average success for newbs right out of the gate. Between the 2 of us we earned a little over $500. She's an incredibly talented artist so Steemit is a perfect platform for her and she does very well consistently. She has already had multiple $100+ articles and most of her posts tend to do anywhere from 10-30 a piece on the low end. I'm not as interesting a person to the general public I guess so I don't earn as much as she does by any stretch but I have still managed to gain a decent reputation and have had a $100+ post myself although most of my posts are hit or miss as far as profits are concerned. I would probably be a better example of the average user attempting to put quality post out without being insanely unique, talented or beautiful. That being said I've made a couple hundred myself.
After a family pet became ill before passing on, we had taken about a month break from Steemit as we just weren't in the mood to write positive upbeat blogs. Over the last couple days we have just started to look at Steemit again and are trying to build back up some momentum. At the end of the day I think if you really want to become a full time blogger Steemit is probably the fastest and easiest way to accomplish that goal. Like I said, in our spare time @j-vo and I have earned about $800 on here to-date with about 5 weeks of cumulative work. No that doesn't pay our bills by any means but I'm pretty sure we can triple that or more in another month or two. We have almost 800 followers already and as soon as we get cranked back up full steam again that number will just continue to grow day after day. The best advice I could give you is to learn as much about how Steemit works and to try your best to stick to the core ideals of Steemit. With consistency (no more than 4 a day) and quality posts, meaning unique original content presented in a non half-assed way, you will do great! Don't copy other peoples content, don't try to make money here off other people's youtube videos/memes, don't spam your affiliate links, all those kinds of things will get you flagged down by the community destroying your reputation. Simply be you, have fun and enjoy the community! I think Steemit is an incredible platform that is posed to blow up after this next hard fork. I hope you find this helpful :) Welcome to Steemit and I wish you the best!