Welcome to steemit! dont worry about up-votes for now. i am a fellow 23 year old, and even though my lack of capitals and punctuation is alarming, i assure you its because of the time it takes to add them. even though "up-voting" is how you make money from this website, dont worry too much about the amount of votes you get, but the content that people should be up-voting. this is a forum where people can make money putting in useful opinions, but some other people are more worried about pure numbers than quality. since this website is still very new, you are probably going to be one of the first people to be part of the community (like i was accepted today), and in the long term as the website gathers new members, and your posts begin to get older, in time the new members will stumble on your older posts that might still make money from a good opinion months or years later. if you post for quantity, you might be stuck with whatever number you can herd together right now. - good luck and i hope you make the most of this website!