Your vape is a copy of the original 'hot plate vape', the BC Vaporizer. That was my first vaporizer, unfortunately. It uses conduction to heat, thus the hot plate nickname. Only the herb that comes in contact with the hot metal gets vaporized. With this vape you should grind your herb as fine as you can since the side that's up (not contacting the metal) doesn't get cooked.

At best, you'll be sucking a lot of air in order to get vapor. Although my BC vape was enough to get me hooked on vapor, I hated using it. Very inefficient. If your temp is high enough, you should see vapor rising from the surface and the air in the dome should get a little cloudy. Then you can hit it. The BC vape has a carb hole on it, but I found it to be useless and I ended up lifting the glass up to clear the vapor out.

What you should do if you want to really experience true vaporizing is get a convection vape (most vapes are convection). With convection, heated air is passed through the herb, vaporizing ALL the herb. At worst you just have to stir the bowl to make sure it's all exposed to the heat.