There are many ways that you can earn on Steemit and it is fairly easy to start seeing good results if you are consistent with your blogging.
Steemit is my favorite topic because I have started at zero and I have made good progress so far, so to answer your question I am going to list the ways you can earn on Steemit.
Writing blog posts:
You can earn rewards when you post quality content on your Steemit blog and people upvote the post. You also earn from your own upvote. Rewards are 50% in Steem Power and 50% in SBD, if you choose to split it that way.
Commenting: You also earn rewards when you post comments on people’s post and they upvote your comments.
Upvoting: You earn curation rewards for upvoting people’s posts and comments.
The more Steem Power you have, the more upvote value you can give when you upvote, and the more rewards that you can get too. It will be better to consider having at least 100 SP in your account so you can get better results.
Being a witness: You can set a server and participate in running the Steem blockchain. this is not for the average user. (That’s the equivalent of mining.)
Delegating Steem Power: If you have Steem Power you can delegate it to a voting bot and earn daily rewards. The Steem is still in your account, you just delegate the power and can revoke at any time.
See this post for more info @jerrybanfield https://steemit.com/budget/@jerrybanfield/new-automatic-daily-payouts-of-60-apr-for-steem-power-delegations
This is great for someone who has money and do not want to blog, or a blogger who wants to grow his holding.
Using voting bots: When you make a post, promote it with a bot. Send 5 SBD for example to a bot that will upvote your post and the rewards on the post will most of the time give you your 5 SBD back and more, plus much more Steem Power than you would have had not using the bot.