Steemit is great! Well if you've been up-voting you are doing it right, that 3$ in steem power is what you get to start off. I joined about 2 weeks ago and haven't put the effort into making blogs that I should have, and my payout was still decent.
I highly recommend making an introductory post about yourself including a picture and about as much as you wrote in this post if not more, and its been a while since I've seen an introduction worth less then $200 if you put the work in and its not 6 words.
Happy steeming :)
Zach