Random Advice for Hive Newbies

It can be a tough job being a newbie on the Hive blockchain. You write a post, upload it, and then watch it drift to the bottom on the New page garnering zero votes along the way. Do that a few times, and who wouldn’t start having thoughts about giving up?

I am far from being one of The Old Ones here. But if things on the intertubes can be measured in anything like dog years, I have passed the puppy stage or, since this is Hivelandia, the guppy stage. And I’ve learned at least a few things along the way.

Many things that newbies do here simply do not work.

Begging for upvotes is a fool’s errand. Stop doing it. It’s beneath you, it makes you look like a dork loser, and it does not work. Just stop.

Follow for follow pleas are even worse. People who’ve been here any length of time are annoyed by them no end. And even if you do manage to pick up a few followers, so what? Having followers is very much overrated by newbies. Having readers is what you really should want. Somehow, I’ve gotten over 2,000 followers, but only a few dozen of them are semi-regular readers. Your readers are gold. Your nominal followers are fluff.

The value of having followers is a bit like being Vice President of The United States of America. John Nance Garner, FDR’s first Vice President, nailed it when he described the Vice-Presidency of the United States as “not worth a bucket of warm piss”.

You want readers, not followers. (I’m speaking about mostly-text posts, but the same things are true if you post your art, photography, or video content.)

There’s no easy method, no quick fix, no magic bullet.

This is an attention economy. You’ve got to post content that people will want to spend their time on. Sometimes, that means useful. Sometimes, that means entertaining. Sometimes, that means from the heart. But it never means taking shortcuts. Spamming and plagiarizing will earn you enemies rather than readers. You’ll get downvoted, your Reputation number will drop like a rock, and you will earn zero.

So write stuff that people will want to read. And not just posts, write comments like that. Avoid “Nice post!” comments like the plague. If you’ve got something to say, engage with the poster and the Hive community at large. Lots of people read comments. I’d bet that there’s a significant subset of folks here who spend more time reading and writing comments than reading and writing posts.

Hoping to have Whales spray you with some of their massive upvotes? Fuhgeddaboudit. There are only 30 of them, and half of those aren’t even active as curators. And of those who are, you can count the number of those actively searching out newbie content on one hand. Of a guy who’s had an industrial accident that cost him a few fingers. But there are a lot of Orcas and Dolphins who do manual curating.

But know that whatever you do, it’s hard to earn Hive. And as more people join and post, it’s going to get harder. Hive just is not a get rich quick scheme. It never has been, except maybe in the very early days of The Old Chain Whose Name Will Not Be Spoken.

One thing that you might notice is that those who do earn well here are not newbies. This is not their first rodeo. And the posts that they earn well on are of consistently high quality. People like @meesterboom, @nonameslefttouse, and @tarazkp (all very different “styles”) somehow make it look easy. But looks are deceiving; they’ve all busted their butts here. And, after all, it’s pointless to compare your earnings to someone else’s. That way lies madness.

Hive is a long-term thing. Take ownership of it. Most noobs should not even think about cashing out their earnings for at least several years. Granted, there will be some exceptions, like those who live in Venezuela just trying to make it from one day to the next, struggling to put food on the table for their families. But even in those cases, I’ve seen people who siphon off their liquid earnings, but not their Hive Power.

So if you’re taking 50/50 rewards, strongly consider using the internal market to convert your HBD earnings into Hive and powering it up. Or (still keeping it in the Hive ecosystem) buy some Hive-Engine tokens for the long-haul. I like EDS, EDSM, LEO, LBI, and SPI, but do your own research.

Hive is very much a community. And in the great scheme of things, not a very big community. Yet.

Look around your in real life community. There are people who plant flowers, work in their gardens, and pick up after their dog’s poops. And there are people who toss their cigarette butts onto the street, smack their kids because that’s what their parents did, and piss in alleys after drinking too much beer.

Which would you want to have in your community?

Be that person in Hivelandia.

^{Badge thanks to @arcange}

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