I started with Pov-ray and similar stuff on my old 286 pc back a while. I really got started with Truespace 4 with modlling and animation. Then I found Poser at a price I could afford , and upgraded to Lightwave when they had a sale.  I tinker with it all, but am not great with any of it, it is fun though to build something that works in Poser.

Try a few demos and see what works for you. I hated Blenders interface but love Lightwaves , mainly because its text and not odd little symbols.   Some of the advanced modellers are worth the expense because they save time with more powerful tools. Spend a bit more time and even a very basic modeller will get you there.  

There are modelling tutorials that teach best methods of joining things , like joining two cylinders, cylinder to cube, and that sort of thing. For Poser it amounts to use quads and tris and try to keep the mesh low poly and neat.

Most of my good models cant work in Poser because they are high polygon, subdivision models that go to a million polygons.