Yes, I joined on 11th of August, 2017. Initial days of at Steemit, I hardly got any reward which you check going back to my posts. After spending a couple of months I invested $200 to $300 to SBD. That time the value of an SBD was nearly about a dollar or less so I got more than 250+ SBDs. I started promoting my posts to bot with SBDs. In the meantime, I started getting recognition, followers increased and I also got natural upvotes and rewards without taking any bot service.

Later I converted the remaining SBDs into STEEM and then Did Powering Up and thus I have a little bit of SP you see.
You can concentrate on quality content - content could be anything you like and you think this community will be eager to follow or listen. Follow other reputed and good users. Start commenting on their posts and try to engage with your audiences.