about the upvote, till you reach 500 steem power ''officially'' you vote with 100% of your power let's say your vote worth 10 cents so every time you upvote you do it by giving 10 cents.

After you get 500 steem power a sliding scale will show up making you choose how much % you wanna spend on each upvote. For now do what @apanamamama suggested and also try out steem now ( below is the link) where you can check exactly how much voting power you have till it's off or full and also who upvotes you! https://www.steemnow.com/

Now if you wanna hear my strategy, what i basically do is mostly never use 100% of my upvote in order to upvote a lot of people. on the other hand i never upvote with 1% as i wanna give them something $$$. For now my 100% upvote worth 0,60$ or a bit more-less depending on steem's price while my 1% vote is worth 0,01$. In general my average is 11%-35%