OK so I started mining this yesterday, about 19 hours ago... I have it running with the crypto-n engine pool and depositing into coinsmarket
so far 0.5 YTN have turned up in the wallet. woooo I made 8cents

I've got the miner running on a normal laptop at home and I also created a free aws account with a basic server just to test.
How can I improve the performance? also what does the text in the miner mean, things like 'accepted 99/100' for example?
I'm a complete newbie to this
When you do the mining, the miner submits the shares . So 99/100 means you submitted 100 shares and 99 were accepted.
This is fine, nothing to worry about.
You get the rewards based on the shares you submit and it depends on the hardware capability.