A introduction for beginners by a beginner.

Double meaning in the title: + 10 points.
Good job marketing yourself : - 50 points.

By the off chance that you are actually a beginner who needs help here you go

If you are new here then allow me to first say in behalf of the whole community:

"Welcome to Steemit."

Now that that's out of the way let's get started. I won't waste your time by explaining how cryptocurrencies or STEEM work. Since you're here reading this I can assume you already know that much and/or are just interested in how to get that sweet cash that guy on Youtube keeps talking about.

 Since I'm still a beginner take everything I say with a grain of salt.

A quick note about the community

Even though this is a social network community it's unlike that of most other sites, due to the fact that every member of it (some more than others) is tied with STEEM and through that with money. Since money is indirectly on the line, you can expect most people to be on their best behavior. Take this however you want, the important part is to know such an incentive exists. In my experience majority of the community is overwhelming friendly and helpfull. For more info check @thecryptofiend's Complete Steemit Etiquette Guide.

In regards to creating an account

If you don't have an account yet you can submit a request for one since it takes a couple of hours to a couple of days (rarely) for it to be approved. The whole process is pretty self explanatory, I'm sure you can figure it out. And if you're worrying about weather it's safe to give out your phone number like that, Steemit just needs it to discourage people from creating multiple accounts. No one's gonna spam your phone with unwanted messages.

Moving onward

I'll assume you already have an account set up. You can mess around with the setting (not that there are a lot of them). Keep in mind that all of this information can be easily found in the FAQs or with a quick search. Do your own research after this if you're interested. There is a lot to be learned if you're willing to learn it.

Now to get to the meat of things

There are 3 major currencies on the Steemit platform:

STEEM is the cryptocurrency of the platform. Think of it as a cheap (currently 1.28 USD) bitcoin. At the moment you can exchange it for other cryptocurrencies, which can be used to buy fiat currencies.
STEEM Power (SP) is the value representing your influence (power) in the network. The more you have the more your upvotes are worth and subsequently the more you'll earn. There is also a thing called delegated STEEM Power, in your wallet it's the value in parentheses. It's essentially SP lent to you by another person (new users should have some given to them automatically to help them hit the ground running).
STEEM Dollars (SBD) is a different currency meant to be equal to about 1 USD (currently 0.95 USD). It can be easily exchanged for STEEM or can be used to purchase things in marketplaces (haven't looked into that yet).

Earning money by upvoting content

Q: Will this make you a millionaire?

A: No, no it won't. But it'll definitely help in the long term.

Essentially the curators (people who have upvoted a post) earn up to 25% of the post's rewards in STEEM and SBD. The more SP you have the greater your rewards will be. It's a fair system by design: By upvoting a post you increase it's value proportionally to your SP and get rewards based on that.

The most important thing to remember when voting is that the earlier you upvote a post the more of the rewards you'll claim, but the system is set up as for the first 30 minutes the curators will split their vote rewards with the author. For example:

If you upvote a freshly made post: All of your potential rewards will handed to the author.
If you upvote 15 minutes after post: Your rewards will be split equally between you and the author.
If you upvote 30 minutes or more after a post: You will claim all of 100% of the curation rewards.

With that being said it's a good practice to upvote posts made close to 30 minutes ago. However it's a important to remember to only vote for post you genuinely find interesting and/or think other people will find interesting.

Which leads us to the next point: Voting Power

Voting Power (VP) is the amount in percentage of how much your vote is worth. With each vote your Voting Power decreases by 2%. A vote made with 50% VP will be worth half of the same vote made with 100%. Of course your VP recharges automatically by 20% each day. To maximize your rewards it's best to make an average of 10 upvotes per day. You can easily check your remaining Voting Power, along other stats on steemstats.com.

Earning rewards by creating post a.k.a being an author

This is where the real magic happens. You won't become rich just by posting random stuff (not unless you're extremely lucky), but the Steemit definitely provides you with a chance to do so.

Note to self: Write a post about what an amazing idea a social network which rewards it's users with cryptocurrency is.

You can post just about anything here: photos, blogs, articles, video etc. However be sure to follow the Terms of Service (which we all skipped) in regards to copyrighted material. If you're only posting original content you shouldn't have a problem with that.

Try to figure out what are the best topics to post about write now (this is always a subject to change) and give you're own unique spin to them. Also, no need to say that a well thought out and/or entertaining post will be received a lot better than a post just trying to make a quick buck.

Steemit is a long run game. Consistently good content is the way to go.

And now for something mildly different

I suggest to make your first post an introduction about yourself just to test things out and to have some info for anyone who's interested.

To start working on your post simply click on the "Submit a Story" button in the top-right.
To post a video just paste a link to it in the editor.
If you click on Raw HTML you will be shown a preview of your post (very useful for finishing touches in formatting).
To post an image either:

Use the editor's image option this will work only for images from the web. I recommend hosting the images on postimg.org (you can keep them safe and use the appropriate size for your post, which will speed up loading time) or a similar service before uploading them here.
Or view your post in Raw HTML and click on "selecting them" button below the text editor. This will allow you to upload directly from your computer. You may want to resize your images before uploading (no need to be a photoshop expert to do that).

Afterwards

You've published you're first post Congratulations. You've probably received several messages from bots welcoming you to the community along with a couple of helpful links, but just in case you didn't get it here is an important one steemnow.com use it to monitor activity on your account. On a side note I wouldn't recommend getting into bots, (maybe Steemit will crackdown on them in the future) just concentrate on growing your account naturally.

So what now?

You probably haven't made much with just one post.

In case you're rolling in money right now disregard everything I've said, I clearly don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

From here on it's up to you, engage with the community, post quality content often (but no more than 2 times a day), learn about all sorts of thing and maybe one day you'll earn enough to buy a pizza (it will be the best pizza you've ever tasted).

In all seriousness the most important thing is to have fun on the platform, and if you make some profit consider it a bonus.

I guess I'll go brush up on my knowledge on cryptocurrencies.

-The endless grind of learning

Beginner's introduction to steemit.