Haha, I have all these same questions, still! :)
I am also not clear on monetization, I have gotten 1 transaction so far for .01 USD, but I have seen posts where others are getting more. It definitely does not seem as lucrative as the early days of the original noise.cash tho
I hope you enjoy it - it is pretty slow to start off with, but lots of Hivers over there, so hopefully you find out about cool opportunities. I think the best way I discovered to find specific people to follow (rather than scrolling through Explore) is to enter their username in the profile link if you have it. For example, you can follow me with this link
https://noise.app/PopPopPrego
and if you send me yours I will follow you back
Alright.
I just have to loosen up, since I wasn't the only one having the confusion.