Doing HIVE Full Time?
One of the things I love about Hive is the fact that what you might have planned to write about on a particular day can change in a heartbeat. It might be a well written comment by someone, or a life event that you just have to share with your followers on here. There are countless other reasons that your blog can suddenly take a different direction.
It is your blog after all, why not do whatever you want with it?
In my case, it happens to be one of those great comments that leads me to this post today.
I mentioned the other day that stacking Hive has almost become second nature to me. I don't really even notice it anymore. Sure, I got in and I collect my rewards each day, but that is about it. The Hive gets staked as power and the HBD gets thrown into savings. There have been a couple of times that I thought about powering down, but the idea of growing my account always wins out.
@forexbrokr made a great comment to my comment asking me if I had a number in mind where I would be comfortable pulling an income off the top of my Hive earnings. I quickly pointed out that I live in the US so the number would have to be pretty high. I threw out the random figure of Hive at $50 just because it was the first thing that popped into my head. Then I got thinking about it some more, and here we are.
@forexbrokr replied to my comment pointing out that 10% curation on 100,000 HP with Hive at $5 would be $50,000 per year which is more than the average American makes. While that is true, I have some issues with that number which I will get into whether you like it or not :)
First and most importantly, while $50,000 is a very acceptable number, it is less than what I am making at my current job. Now, I have a pretty cool job. It allows me to do this Hive thing as a hobby and it provides a good life for @mrsbozz and I. Most days I don't hate it and the stress level is pretty manageable.
My point is, if I am going to leave that behind to do Hive full time, it needs to be better. Sure, I might have more time to myself during the day, but if I am going to go all in on this blockchain thing, it needs to be life changing money for me. Call me greedy, but I am talking double my current salary.
Okay, don't call me greedy, instead just call me practical. We all know how volatile this cryptocurrency thing can be. Khal has pointed out in several AMA's that businesses need to have something like three years of "runway" to weather the bear markets. The same holds true for us. If I take a 20% pay cut to do Hive full time, what happens when a correction or bear market his and that 20% cut is suddenly a 50% cut.
No, for me, it needs to be life changing numbers.
I just looked at my rewards from today. With just about 40,000 HP staked, I made about 14 HBD and 37 HP from my post a week ago and my curation. I'd want to keep my account growing, so powering down all of that HP isn't an option. Let's assume I can make about 40 HP per day five days a week (since I don't usually post on the weekends). Now let's assume that I am going to power down half of that per day.
At $20 Hive that would leave me with about $1400 per week on average (after assuming 30% lost to taxes). That isn't too bad, in fact it might even be twice what I am currently making at my full time job. Maybe my pie in the sky number of $50 per Hive was a bit inflated.
Watching it crumble
There was a point a little over a year ago that I was making some life changing money. Between a couple of projects over on the WAX blockchain I was pulling in my bi-weekly salary every three or four days. Unfortunately, we all know what happened... I was putting those funds into other crypto like NFT projects and Cub DeFi. The NFT market went cold, the price of BTC took a major dump, and here we are today making the same number of tokens every three or four days, but at a fraction of the value.
It might have been easy for me to just call it back then, retire early and get ready for a life of luxury. Luckily, I knew better. I knew it probably wouldn't last and while I wish now that I had put more of that crypto into stables, there isn't too much else I would change about that time.
Knowing my luck if I had put those funds into a stable it would have been UST and we all know what happened there...
I do wish I had pumped more money into Splinterlands, but I did put some in there, so I can't complain. Cub will recover eventually I think, and who knows what happens after that.
Anyway, my point is, if I were ever to do this full time, it would have to be life changing money. I'm talking at least double what my wife and I make combined kind of money. Enough money that we can maintain our lifestyle even when the markets are down. I've seen far too many people think they can do this Hive thing full time over the years and end up getting bitten by it.
Sure, some are doing it, and my hats off to them. For me though, it has to be a sure thing or at least a 95% sure thing!
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