I discovered this site late November so it's my first season and I want to know if there are any tips or tricks I should know?

In the short term, just rehearse every 6 hours.

In the long term, be sure to host events every season. Be sure to do this on a week day and also avoid the last week of the season.

Events will get you a lot of money which you can use to upgrade your staff which will forever give you a boost.

Running campaigns are also helpful in the long term to gain influence or money, but your scores will suffer in the short term.

I took a different path than I think most people normally do, in that I spent a few years fundraising and campaigning to max out my staff and greatly raise my influence. That might be more time than you want to wait to have some success, but if you're willing to take your lumps in that process it definitely makes it a lot easier down the road.

I've taken a similar approach to Braeuner. I spent a year and a half fundraising throughout the season. If you do go down that path, you'll only be rehearsing every 12 hours. Once my staff too expensive for fundraising to make sense, I shifted to competitions. That cause me to rocket up from finishing around 6th-7th place in D2 2 seasons ago to now having the possibility of medalling in D1 this season.

Oof I had no idea that running campaigns hurt scores while competing. Right now all of my groups are campaigning Lol

That's ok. You'll be a sleeping giant.

Ditto that, I pretty much maxed out Staff and am working on Influence now.

Do staff have a max level?

Yeah they max out at 25. After level 20 they are super expensive to upgrade.

also remember in early season to try and get you GE as high as you can then do the rest in the later half of the season