Welcome to the Steemit community @americandiamond!

Your boyfriend has given you good advice. ;-)

A couple of Steemit tips, ignore the automated bots, they do nothing for you and just earn from your votes.

We love original content!

Be patient with building an audience.

For many new people, the voting and points system seems complicated at first. Here is an excellent post and entertaining video about how it all works.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@sethlinson/announcing-steemit-explained-a-new-animated-series

You also earn rewards for resharing (resteem) and commenting. How cool is that? So it pays for you to get involved with other people and their content.

Welcome aboard and full Steem ahead! =)

Leo.