Welcome to Steemit! I am new as well but learning. I think the key is to make one new blog post a day, a good one. Follow popular people who post what you're interested in and comment early on their blog posts. They may upvote your comments. You can also get curation rewards for upvoting in the first half hour on a new post. While upvoting costs you nothing, your upvotes are worth less if you do so too often. Check out this link to see how much your upvote is worth:
https://www.steemnow.com/@robmolecule
Just replace my user name with yours.
Also, protect your password!