General brake question

Inertia said
The pads/shoes need to be in full contact with the rotors/drums before you start to get "pedal".
So it can take quite a few pumps to move the pads out, then you should be able to get fluid while bleeding.
Set the emergency on, to ease rear bleeding as well, shoes also need to be against drums.

If the fluid level is not dropping the pads will not make contact with the rotors as disc brakes adjust by the fluid level, as the pads wear the fluid level goes down. It's better to adjust the brake shoes so that they are just contacting the drums rather than applying the emergency brake.