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Source

Steemit is a social media/blogging site, where likes/upvotes are rewarded with influence tokens called steem.
The more influence tokens you have, the more influence you have.

A new batch of steem tokens are made each day, and the more of them you hold, the more say you have over who gets the new ones.

There are 3 ways to get steem;

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• You can blog or comment, and be upvoted by others who hold steem.

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• You can upvote somebody else's blog before it's popular.
  If others agree it's good and it goes on to earn a lot of steem, you get paid some of that; as a reward for highlighting it with your early upvote.
  This is called 'Curating', and some people who hold a lot of steem are able to work full-time just curating blog posts on steemit, being paid for illuminating excellent content.

This is great news for those non-bloggers who struggle with what to say.

Read, upvote the good stuff and make insightful, supportive comments. (I made $14 off a single comment once. Doesn't happen often but it's fun when it does)
Without ever writing a full blog post, upvotes on your comments on other people's blog posts will increase your weight, making your upvotes more lucrative to the author, and giving you a bigger slice of those curation rewards. You'll also pick up followers, which will be handy if you decide to write a blog post at some point.

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• You can buy steem from people who want to sell it, either with bitcoin or with boring old regular money.

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Some people get confused and believe that steemit pays you to blog.
If that were true, the guys who built this place would have run out of money a long time ago.
Also, they're very smart and wouldn't do that.

You're not paid to blog. You're awarded new steem by existing steem holders, based on how much value they believe you've brought to themselves and to the platform, how much weight/steem they have, how popular they think your post will be over it's 7 day lifespan, and how much they like you.
Their voting power refills over time, so upvoting you some of that new steem doesn't cost them anything, except the chance to upvote somebody else instead.

The amount of steem your post has earned is displayed in it's current US dollar value at the bottom of the post.
If the price of steem drops in the week after you post (posts and comments can only be upvoted more steem for 7 days), that dollar value displayed will drop too.
You've still been awarded the same amount of steem, it's just worth less boring money than it was earlier.

It's also important to note that:
A: - 25% of the amount displayed will be awarded to those who upvoted you, as curation rewards.
B: - Only half of the remaining 75% will be immediately available for you to sell.
The rest is still yours, it's just locked away for 3 months.

Source

I've seen steem at 7 cents, and I've seen it over $2.

People buy steem because they want to have influence over what is rewarded and highlighted here, and because they believe it will increase in value.
They believe, as do I, that as more eyeballs arrive, more people will be willing to pay more money to have more influence over what is highlighted/rewarded here, driving demand for steem.
Holders also benefit from increased curation rewards, which can be quite lucrative if you're good at anticipating the mood of the readers, and upvote well and early.

When you post, you can select up to five topics/tags.

Your post will then appear on the trending page for each of these five topics, and will move up each topic's page based on the total steem held be those upvoting it.
The higher it goes and the longer it stays there, the more people will see it, and the more upvotes it will attract.
Some readers just stick to one topic, like #photography, #writing or #teamaustralia.
Tagging your post appropriately is a great way to build a following.
More niche topics have fewer readers, but you're also competing with fewer authors, so use the most appropriate tags, rather than the most popular ones.
I've tagged this post to appear in 'steemit', 'guide', 'teamaustralia', 'advice' and 'welcome'

Tags are one way for your post to be seen; followers are another.

It's a fairly simple mechanic, and not governed by any sort of algorithm.
If somebody likes your posts or comments, they can follow you
From then on, everything you post will appear in their feed, along with everything else posted by people they follow, in chronological order.
Don't envy those with 10,000 followers. Having a lot of followers is great, but if they only followed you hoping you'd follow them back; if they don't read your content, don't upvote, or don't hold much steem, then they're not going to do you much good. Quality over quantity.
If a follower really likes your post and believes their followers would benefit from it, they'll 'Resteem' it, which is like a share on Facebook or a retweet on Twitter.

Some tips:

Everyone wants to be upvoted, followed and resteemed.
That's the assumption, so don't ask for either/all of those things.
People hate that, and will usually downvote you.

Don't enter competitions which require you to resteem for a chance to win. You're disrespecting your followers' eyeballs, and they'll unfollow you.
Only resteem for the benefit of your followers, never for your own.

Don't be a troll. Friends are lucrative here, and enemies are expensive.
Go literally anywhere else on the internet and do it there.
This is also great news for those looking for a bit of respite from all that.
I've never found a more supportive and engaged online community.
It also feels great to 'like' somebody's work and actually see them benefit.
This place is excellent for your state of mind.

If you disagree on a topic, do so with kindness and respect.
There are 3 things steemit has in spades; deep pockets, big egos and long memories.
Swear at the screen if you have to, but pull your head in before you start typing, because...

Everything you post, even if you edit or delete it later, will be publicly visible forever.
This is social media for grown ups.
You know that meme about, "What if every word you say was tattooed on you?" This is that.
There's no umpire here. Nobody will stop people from saying things you hate. Nobody will stop you from saying things other people hate.

There's nobody to run to if you lose your password, it's gone forever, along with all your money.
Save the email they send. Write it down somewhere safe.
Give a copy to grandma. If you lose it, the laws of maths mean you get to look at your money any time you like, but nobody will ever be able to spend it.

Don't steal other people's stuff. If you grab an interesting article off the net, even in a different language and translate it, then post it as your own, you're going to get shot down. Same with images, gifs and video.
If you use it, link to the source you got it from, or people will assume you're claiming to be the creator, and you'll lose friends quick. So for example, when I was writing this piece, the video, above looked like this

The first line is the link to the video, with the <center> brackets pulling it to the centre
The second line shows the word "Source", and links to the page of the guy who made it.
Thanks, Dave :)
It might seem daunting at first, but it's easy to pick up a bit at a time, and there are lots of guides that will help.

Don't worry about depleting your voting power. It refills over time; and running on empty is completely fine, it just means the people you support with an upvote only get your encouragement without any steem attached, until your voting power has recovered a little.
Your upvote will carry very little weight for the first few months anyway.

The guys who built this place didn't write much in the way of rules, they just left it up to the community to decide what the norms should be, so a lot of this is guesswork; but people understand that, and tend to be cool as long as you're acting in good faith.

You won't break anything, so play around with the information at the bottom of this post, look at the total payout, the number of upvotes, my reputation score, and note the tags/topics. Read the comments. If you like somebody's style, click their name and follow them.
You can click on any of the tags or EXPLORE in the menu up the top right, to find other topics of interest, and start following authors you like.

I'll leave it at that, as there's a lot of information to absorb.

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The nuts and bolts are fascinating, but once you start feeling comfortable, you can search out answers to any questions you have. (There are 3 internal currencies, for example, which I've lumped into one, they each do different things, but they're easily converted, so just enjoy gains in any or all of them for now.)

I'm really warming to the idea that this is how the future of social media is going to look. Let's find out together.

Quick Edit: Reach out to me if you're concerned about providing your email address or mobile number.
A small amount of steem is needed to get an account warmed up; which is normally paid by the guys who built the place, so they need these details to make it difficult for one person to sign up 10,000 different names and collect the little bits of steem for each one. There are ways around it (I just lend you the steem myself, to get you started), so if it's a sticking point, please let me know and I'll make it happen.
Thanks @ausbitbank for the suggestion.