Well a reason to get money, okay STEEM, on this platform is to use it for the community good. Then when you vote on stuff it helps others, or you can loan it to various bots and accounts who help others. But yes, I agree it can be very confusing - and I'm a very technical person.

To be honest I really don't think it should be necessary to spend $100 to promote an article - after I got to 1000 STEEM in my account every time I upvote it distributes about $0.13 and that makes a huge difference putting it high up in the new posts listing, which is what drives new clicks, which is what drives "hot" and ultimately "trending". And remember people can re-steem your article to get it promoted later, and your post stays out there for way longer than the 7-day voting period. Adding links to previous posts at the bottom of every new post you make will help drive traffic to old posts. Just posting, posting almost daily will help too - again not to drive money but to get eyeballs on your content.

Good luck to you and keep on posting but don't break the bank doing it, it simply isn't necessary. I have 50,000+ followers on Google+ and never spent a dime there - just three or four years of posting and patience.