Hello there!
It's been over a month since 
Long before I heard about Steemit, I had been struggling with reviving my passion for writing and making it a regular activity. Starting your own blog is just is no longer encouraging these days, in my opinion you need the grace of God and substancial investment to push it out of the sea of numerous failed blogs.
Steemit just seemed like the perfect avenue for that, with added incentive of payouts to keep me going with my new years resolution to develop my writing skills. I got my password a few days to the end of the year 2017, I didn't activate my account until the new years day. I spent the days before that reading the FAQs doing a little homework on Steemit lurking in transaction histories. (hahaha)
First thing to note is that, this minimalistic interface should not fool you Steemit has a lot of depth and complexity to it. The blockchain intergation is an ingenious idea which allows the userbase to build on it in a meaningful way, allowing it to keep up with the rapidly changing world of information technology.
I tried reading the SMT Whitepaper (emphasis on tried) could not get through the "Geekanese". However,
One of my favorites activities on Steemit would be participating on 
Steemit has been an awesome platform to showcase my:
Stats from Jan 1 - Feb 5
- Reputation: 40
- Followers: 127
- Following: 66
- Own Blog Entries: 20
- Comments: 93
- Total Posts: 113
- Est. Account Value: 8.775 😖😖
Tips
Understand how to properly style your fonts, unfortunately the Markdown Styling Guide wasn't much help to me, but i recommend checking out
@christianjombo post on How to Style Your Post Texts
Consistency is key, if your here just for the money without any form of investment in the system you will most likely fizzle out.
Join communities like, Steemitchat, P.A.L, SteemitBloggers by
@jaynie
Make real connections, I know you've seen this advice everywhere and that is because it's true, it goes beyond making great and quality content, but also making meaningful comments can go long way. I learnt some insightful tips from
@dadview page especially Minnow Help and Mnnow help- show your face
Be Spontaneous, make sure you are posting what you know or connect with and be original. Quality content doesn't necessarily mean every post should be in form of a thesis. Spontaniety and originality are very catchy.
Tools will help you keep track of your account,
steemd.com - See your Voting Power, Channel Feed, Blockchain Info etc
steem.cool - Accurate reputation calculator
steem.supply - Check incoming payouts and account value
steemnow -Calculate how much upvotes are worth
In conclusion, without doubt this is a platform with a lot of potential, it is possible to work and earn with it, as long as you are ready to genuinely engage your content and the community. Steemit is my first rodeo with crypto-currency and it has being lovely, I hardly have time for other social media platforms.
I'd like to thank every single peson who upvoted, commented or resteemed my post, really appreciate it. Massive respect to 
@aisaac