Welcome to ASF!
The forum is running new software so a few people, me included, still getting used to that. Everything looks a lot different to how it looked until very recently.
As for investing in dividend paying stocks (shares), any specific questions?
The basic concept is to identify companies which are profitable and paying dividends now with the aim being to find those able to increase, or at the very least maintain, those dividends over time. Even better if the share price rises as well.
To pick a random example to illustrate the concept (this is not a recommendation to buy this stock, it's just an example) suppose that you had bought shares in Commonwealth Bank (CBA) exactly 10 years ago.
You would have paid $49.19 per share at that time. Since then the value of those shares has varied between a low of $24.03 in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis up to a high of $96.69 in 2015. Today they are worth $85.26 each.
Dividends over that time total $32.99 per share, fully franked (that is, tax has been paid at the company tax rate so you don't need to pay that tax yourself).
So the above example shows that dividends can certainly be a very substantial part of the profit to be made via holding shares. Ideally you'd have bought somewhere near that low after the GFC but in the absence of having a crystal ball to know that was going to happen, simply buying and holding has still made a decent profit in that example.
Further, dividends paid by CBA have tended to increase over time. $4.20 per share during the whole of 2016 in two payments versus just 40 cents per share paid as dividends in 1992.
Note that I've just used CBA as an example here because it's a company that just about everyone in Australia has heard of. I'm not saying it is or isn't a good investment, I just picked something that is very well known for the example.
A note about Franking. If the dividends are "franked" then that means that tax has already been paid at the company tax rate before making the dividend payment to shareholders. You can claim that tax as already paid on your tax return and will only need to pay tax on the difference between your marginal tax rate and the company tax rate. In contrast, if the dividends were not franked then you'd need to pay tax on the full amount you received (same as you pay tax on income from wages / salary, bank interest etc). So the franking component is itself valuable, since it represents tax already paid, in addition to the actual amount of the dividend as such.
Dividend of 70 cents fully franked = that's effectively a $1 dividend on which 30% tax has already been paid. You won't need to pay more tax unless your marginal tax rate is above 30%.
Dividend of 70 cents not franked = that's worth 70 cents and you'll need to pay tax on that income.
Some companies pay dividends that are fully (100%) franked. Others do the opposite and you'll need to pay the tax. In a few cases they'll split it (eg the dividend is 50% franked).
Hope all that's of some use. I've assumed no prior knowledge so kept to the basic concepts.