Increasing your influence on steemit.com when voting for posts and when posting will also result in an increased income for your actions, time and efforts spent on the website. In order to do that you will have to get more STEEM POWER and there are numerous ways you can do that:
Posting high quality and unique content on steemit.com and voting for other high quality content that gets published, it takes time and effort, but the rewards you get in STEEM POWER directly increase your influence and the STEEM DOLLARS (SBD) rewards you can convert to STEEM and then use them to Power Up converting them to STEEM POWER.
It is possible to purchase STEEM or STEEM DOLLARS (SBD) from a crypto exchange such as Poloniex.com or Bittrex.com, then send the purchased tokens to your steemit.com account and and convert them to STEEM POWER
Note that STEEM tokens can be directly converted to STEEM POWER using the Power Up function, but converting STEEM DOLLARS is possible only to STEEM and then you can use them to Power Up to STEEM POWER, however this takes 1 WEEK for the conversion process!
STEEM POWER is the value of your vote. As a newbie your vote is probably worth less than a cent, but there are users here who have been interacting with the website long enough to build their SP so that their vote is worth $10! A vote from a whale could be worth over $100.
To build steem power all you have to do is like and comment on other peoples posts. But don't go liking everything. The trick is to choose good quality content, things that will be popular with other people because the more money that makes after you have voted, the more you will make for voting for it.
I joined this 2 weeks ago and didn't write my first post until this week. After you have used the site for a while you will start to come up with good ideas for a post. The best posts are the ones that are new and original. And positive, you will notice as you explore the site that the posts that make the most are very positive and nobody makes money from complaining.