Everyone is here to make money, eventually the site might grow enough to where people use it for purposes other than to try and make money. If you are trying to make money I recommend you not try to post without first investigating which curation teams vote on what types of posts, and try to tailor your post to get votes from them instead of just trying to write general things without a large following to vote on it. It's nearly impossible to make money that way. Also, as a new user you should just comment to gain visibility, very few people look at posts that aren't already voted on.
And like acidyo and you have said, people don't use this site if they already make their money from other sources because the information available on this site isn't very broad for most topics other than... how to make money on steemit, lol. If you're new here then I recommend you spend more time reading than writing, and find out how others make money.
And yes, lots of it, if not most, has to do with getting in early or having lots of money to begin with, but there are definitely approaches that can eventually yield results if you are smart about it.