I started on steem not so long ago i was in the same boat as you.
I just bought some bitcoin and then sended them to bittrex to buy Steem.
Then with my steem i created an account on steemit and just sended my steem on bittrex to steemit and voila :)
hope that helped you
Thanks I will work with bittrex. Do you know the value of steem compared to the US dollar?
Just use https://coinmarketcap.com/ to know the value of the coins :)