don't worry, i can hardly tell different fish apart either. they all look the same to me :p
there are a couple of ways you can become more "powerful" on steemit with your votes. i'll try to explain the 2 main ways:
you just keep posting and commenting and slowly grind your way up. when you get steem, you can "power up" and it will add to your steem power. steem power is basically your power level. the more you have, the more weight your vote will carry on steemit :)
just buy steem from one of the many exchanges and power it up. you are essentially buying yourself into the system, so you can consider it a shortcut. but there is risk involved since the price of steem can fluctuate, and you might find yourself on the losing end of an investment.
most whales on steemit today are those who have been here since the start, and have either accumulated steem power from posting over the year, or simply invested in steem when the price was low. lowest point was when 1 steem was worth $0.07, and now it's worth about $2!! so there are some users like @trafalgar who went balls deep and invested $100,000 when steem was at about $0.20, and now he is worth over $1,000,000 on steemit :)