Please Help. STEEMIT for the brainless.

I recently joing STEEMIT and DLive. I absolutely love the community and everyone has been super welcoming. My question is.... How does this Upvote thing work?

I need someone to explain it to me like I'm a 3 year old. From what I'm understanding so far....

When there's an Upvote, it get's split 4 ways.. A small portion goes to the Upvoters and the 3 other ways go to the content creator through different types of STEEM (STEEM, STEEM Power, and that other thing.) Also, the amount shows is that the USD worth of what you've received or is it the actual Crypto amount?

I mean, is that the gist of it, or am I missing something? Like everyone else, I would love to be an asset and grow my profile to become an asset to this site, but I need to completely understand what I'm contributing to.!