Well, here is the simple version: even on SteemIt, it takes a whole lot of money if you want to make a whole lot of money. About 2/3rds of the total coins are still held in the hands of a few of the founders' accounts. No matter what anyone does, they can immediately change everything - if they so choose.

You CAN make money here but, unless you have a ton of money that you use for self-upvoting, you're probably not going to make much here as a writer/blogger/vlogger. Unless you are, or you become, a very good and talented writer - in which case you'll possibly be able to make enough money to live on - but only if that is what you want to dedicate your life and all of your time to doing, AND you dedicate a lot of effort to developing and interacting with your followers, AND you do this for a long time, starting out with little to no rewards for your efforts.

Do not let that discourage you, however. Just know that like anything in life, you have to work hard to get ahead. That takes time. People are not just going to drop free money in your lap, just because they have a lot of it.

Use SteemIt as a place to learn about money. Learn about trading, digital assets, how to set up wallets, how to do Technical Analysis, how to do Macro Analysis, etc. You can even trade tons of Steem coins and make a profit - but "powering up" locks up your money for 13 weeks. If you bought Steem at $1, t sucks to see Steem go up to $4 only to realize that it will take you 13 weeks to power down - and who knows where the price of Steem will be then? It might be $8, or it might be 75 cents.