We are all early creators and curators. Steemit is so much at its infancy stage that it's still called BETA. Think a year from now how many more users will be on? As of writing this there are 27,120 accounts on STEEMIT. Some of which were hacked/locked out.
Invest what you can into Steem Power now(as long as you can afford it). Whether it's BTC, Ether, or BitShares until you have enough Steem Power to go idle and still receive at least 1 SP per day. I am guessing that is around 80 - 90 Steem Power as of writing.
https://steemit.com/@(your user name)/transfers
Most users are unaware or just don't care of the label their account has that can be found on steemd.com/@(your username) but it shows your vested points and you can scroll down to see your label https://steemd.com/distribution
Seeing your SP go up in value by a minium of one Steem Power per day will help motivate you to do more. It's the little incremental hundredths of SP that you never notice. And even thought I've only been using Steemit for less than a week most of the time I spent at the initial $10 signup range. Now I have momentum to keep me posting and creating content.
Most people are pumping the idea of being curators and upvoting popular posts or ones you think will be popular as the fastest way to make money. If you don't want to play the Blog Post lottery in hopes yours becomes trending.