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How To Get Started on Hive and Succeed !! (Step-By-Step Guide)
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1. Understanding Why You Start on Hive.
I would say that the reality for 95% of the people who come to Hive and start a blog is mainly because they aim to earn some money with it. However, if this is your main motivation, I would say it's unlikely that you will get that far as there will be so many walls to break that you will give up sooner than later.
In fact, earnings should be the last thing on your mind when you want to succeed on Hive. Some Reasons to start a blog here that come way before money...
You Genuinely want to start a blog: There are many people who start a Blog, Twitter account, YouTube account, ... to share things that they are interested in with the world or as a way to help them reach a certain goal or connect with likeminded people. Hive is just one of the options to do this and I would say it's not a bad one. Also if you just really enjoy writing one way or another, having a Hive Blog really works quite well.
Free Hosting, Potential Readers, & Monetization all-in-one: If you start a blog elsewhere, you potentially have to pay for hosting, need to do Search Engine Optimization to find readers, get tons of traffic before you potentially can monetize. In Hive, it's free to make an account, you potentially can get readers from the platform especially if you use communities, and there is instant monetization when you get upvotes.
Decentralized & Uncensorable: One of the features of Hive is that you can't get thrown off the platform as it's decentralized running on a blockchain. If you have a Youtube account for example, you are always at risk of getting banned which especially for those who put tons of work into to the point it provides some income, it can be a big stress factor. The only way to get censored on Hive is with voting power that downvotes you and even then your content still remains available.
The Community & Finding Likeminded People: This I would say is one of the greatest things about having a blog as it easily allows you to connect with likeminded people which gives an added value on your journey.
2. Understanding How The Game is Played.
I would say the main concept of Hive is deeply Flawed! There is the inflationary Hive Crypto Currency, which is distributed through upvotes based on the stake size of the one upvoting. This has proven that it doesn't naturally bring the best content to the top, but instead the kind of content that has the most voting power behind it, the ones who made the most (whale) friends, the ones who have most voting power behind them, ...
So Content discovery is quite bad on Hive and it still needs to get fixed one way or another. However, this doesn't mean that you can't get some good upvotes and earnings on your posts. I mainly see 2 ways how your posts can get decent payouts. I'm talking about the 1$-15$ range of which you eventually after 7 days get 45% as part goes back to the curators and part to the Decentralized Hive Fund.
- Get Upvotes From Curation Groups (or Whales):
There are many curation groups (like @ocd / @curangel / @splinterlands / ... with a ton of voting power that go around Hive and upvote good content. If you are either meet certain requirements (like making specific Splinterlands content taking part in one of the
), get really lucky, or suck up one way or another to the ones who are pressing the upvote button you will be able to get some upvotes from them.
There is no real investment required to get these upvotes and in fact there are a ton of accounts that are inside the "curation upvote circle" who have been here for many years and get big upvotes on each post while they just cash out everything and hold almost no Hive Power themselves which should not be possible in my view.
The main downside of the curation groups is that most likely you will have to bend your content toward what tends to be upvoted by them and somehow suck up to get noticed. It's also a bit of a lottery as you can work hours on a post and get no upvotes whatsoever this way, or have something that was made quicker and get 15$+ of total post rewards. To potentially get these upvotes, your are better off focusing on quality over quantity and only have 1 or 2 posts a week.
- Get Automated "Upvote 4 Upvote":
This is somewhat of a taboo topic, especially during a bull market when big accounts upvote other big accounts which makes everyone scream 'it's not fair and abuse'.
However, it's the reality as it is, and if you don't want to fully rely on the occasional curation group, or manual upvote. The only real way to get some reilable upvotes on your posts is by getting others to put you on their Automated Upvote list (for example using
). This way based on the setting, each post you make will trigger some automated upvotes which can be seen as an alternative to Patreon.
One of the main differences compared to curation groups is that you will effectively need quite some Hive Power yourself to get this going. I would say that there is little to no content on Hive that is actually worth paying for. So you quickly end up upvoting your friends or the ones that upvote your content in a more automated way, as nobody with a ton of voting power really has the time or the willpower to browse through a ton of crap to find something that is actually worth the upvote.
This building of auto-upvotes usually takesmany years, and it brings about the problem that those who do get in a position where they have many auto-votes might get lazy just posting daily to collect the votes. If you have a 1-post-a-day blogging style, the auto-uvotes model is a really rewarding one though as you know you will get at least some upvotes on each post. So it's small but steady with an investment instead of occasional upvotes with no investment where you need to get lucky and are left discouraged many times.
- Get Upvotes on Comments & Make Friends:
If you make content on your Hive blog, the chance is very big that nobody will really get to see it as there is poor content discovery due to the upvote system. So the main way to get eyes on you own content is by discovering and interacting with other people on Hive. If you are social and leave meaningful comments, you are much more likely to make friends and get some eyes on your own blog. Most people read the comments they get and often upvote them also while there is a curation group lik e @commentrewarde which will give certain comments a good upvote.
Especially when you start out on Hive, you will be able to gain a lot by taking 10-30 minutes each day just to browse some communities and make some comments on posts that you like are relate to.
3. Find Your Niche & Community.
Basically, know what you want to blog about and bring some consistency to it. Ultimately, you want people to press the follow button who enjoy your content and it's harder to do if one day you make an article about technology and the next day about religion so to say.
Figure out what you actually want to blog about and stick to that. Communities on Hive are a good starting point as they easily allow you to find others with similar interests.
4. Long-Term Mindset & Small Initial Investment!
The best way to succeed is to have a longer-term mindset of at least giving yourself 1 year to get something going on Hive without any intentions to cash anything out. If you haven't started writing yet and already are thinking of things to buy with possible earnings, there is almost no chance that you will succeed I would say. Instead of having focus on Getting, shift your focus on giving. That will get you a whole lot further in this ecosystem even though it might not instantly manifest in that way.
There is no need to make a big investment, but I would say that just buying 25$-100$ to start off with will give you a massive head start and it will pay itself back in no time!
Currently, the price of Hive is 0.24$ so 25$ will give you 100+ Hive. There are multiple things that this will allow you to do...
Do All the Transactions on Hive You Need: Making posts, publish pictures, commenting, casting upvotes, ... all require some recoursed whicg hive Hower gives you. I would say that just 50 to 100 HP gives you all the resources that you will need.
Community Goodwill: Those who have quite some Hive Power value things like if a new user actually pressed the buy button to get some Hive. This makes them way more likely to press the upvote buttom when they go check you out compared to someone who is new and already has done a cashout.
Lower KE Ratio: One of the metrics that is more and more looked is the KE Ratio, which gives a number that indicates the total post & curation payouts compared to the Hive Power. So the lower the number, the better a users in theory is or Hive, and the higher the number, the more of a value extractor a user is. Having even a tiny investment Powering Up Some Hive will give you a very low KE Ratio to start off with which is more likely to get you some upvotes. You can check the KE Ratio
| Good For Hive | Bad for Hive |
|---|---|
 |  |
Allow You To Rent Hive Power: While having 100 Hive Power to start off with is great, it will still leave your own upvote at close to zero. The way to easily get this up is by paying Hive to Leave Hive power on
which I would say is really worth it when starting out as it pays itself back pretty much and more. It generally goes at the cost of ~8.5% or less yearly. I would say a good mark is around 3000HP-4000HP to start off with which will give you an upvote worth 0.03$-0.05$. This is enough to get noticed when you upvote someone and will also give curation rewards that easily can go above 8%. So the price it cost to rent is paid back mostly by the curation rewards and you are much more likely to attract upvotes on your own content this way.Use Liquid HBD Earnings to Lease more Hive Power: Once you get going with your actual content, instead of cashing out HBD or putting it into savings, you can use that to get more HP leases and systematically grow your upvote on the platform. If done consistenly, it can put you in a positive spiral which speeds things up like crazy. More HP leased = more likely to get higher post payouts -> These allow you to lease more HP which again should increase your payouts allowing you to lease more and more. All of this while you keep earning the Staked Hive from your post as something you own and potentially can cash out on one day. This entire mechanic is a loophole that I don't see that many using. However, the ones I did see doing this managed to really grow faster than anyone else also building tons of auto-upvotes along the way which mostly stayed when the leases ended and were not renewed.
Make Crazy Gains in A Possible Bull Market: This happened before and it would not be a surprise for it to happen again. Crypto can be a crazy place with tokens going way up and at only around a ~120 Million market cap, there is a lot of room to potentially go up again. At the same time if it were to happen, the chance is quite big for things to collapse down again as the amount that needs to be bought from inflation that will be dumped at higher prices quickly becomes too much.
5. Start Blogging!
Once you know what you want and have a tiny bit of Hive Power and possibly some leased Hive Power, you can start your blogging journey here on Hive.
Some things you might want to know:
# Introduction Post: These potentially can do extremely as curation groups tend to want new users to feel the joy of getting a big payout which can hook new users. This often is followed by a big deception in the 2nd post with no upvotes whatsoever though. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what the exact steps are to get best noticed on an introduction post aside from the fact that the ones that do well generally have a lot of pictures of yourself while using the #introduceyourself tag. Checking out the
looking at what the ones did who get upvotes from there also might give some good indication.# Make Visually Good Looking Posts: You want to learn how to make your posts at least look good, checking something like
. The first image you use will be your cover image and you best use the ratio 800x450 (or equivalent) to make it fit nicely.# Understand the Dust Threshold: In order to avoid spam, all posts or comments that in total are below 0.02$ are turned into dust. This is one of the reasons why you want at least 2000-3000 HP as you can't really upvote comments on your post below that. In order to avoid getting payouts turned to dust especially when you start making some commets here and there, you can use a service like @dustsweeper where you send some Hive to which it will use as a balance to make sure none of the uovotes you get are turned into dust.
# Use 3rd Party Websites or Interfaces: the one that instatly come to mind are
/ / / / .# Tribes & Using the Right Tags: Aside from Hive, it's also possible to earn Tribe Tokens if you use the right tags. While I'm not really a fan of the tribes concept as it overcomplicatse things and tokens generally tend to be sold off without anyone really caring. They do offer some extra earnings. You will need to put some time into it though to figure out which are actually with it. This is currently my Hive-Engine wallet
# Write About Hive and Your Progress: The one thing that all users here on Hive have in common and are somewhat interested in is Hive itself. This is why posts about Hive tend to do quite well. If you show your interest in the platform and your involvment wanting to do well it generally gives off a good vibe. So what I would recommend is making a monthly update post on your Hive Journey with some numbers and goals while sharing your overall experience. It's simply easier to upvote someone who genuinely seems to care about Hive and is in it for the long run with some goals.
6. Expect To Hit Some Walls!!!
Many that get started on Hive coming in with the idea to earn might get some nice payouts early on by curation groups to see those fade away rather quickly after quick they hit the first wall and give up. Hive is not meant to be easy to succeed in, so the walls that you inevitably will face are there to be broken if you want to succeed long-term on this platform. The key to that I would say is actually enjoying the process and not caring all too much abouy the earnings. It takes time and a lot of effort to get in a position where you succeed and get consistant post payouts on this platform!
Conclusion!
If you want to get started on Hive and do well, I would say get in with the right mindset which isn't focused on taking but more on giving. Find your niche, learn to understand how everything actually works, make a small initial investment to get going and re-invest all your liquid earnings by leasing more Hive Power which will give you back way more than it costs while it ramps things up quickly. Don't give up on the first wall that you face, and most of all make sure that you just enjoy it all. That is what I would say is the key to success on Hive
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