Why don't we like money???
I would have thought that as a large group of crypto enthusiast that the people working towards bringing HIVE into the mainstream would be very interested in making money.
I assumed that people brought together with the enticement of being rewarded for their online activities would jump at the chance to earn rewards for their online activities.
For some strange reason this doesn't seem to be the case???
Everybody here owns some small amount of hive. Some a little more than others. So I am going to make a huge leap of faith and assume that everybody here would love to see hive at $10. I know that I would.
Now in the long run, I think that the main value of hive at some point will be derived from the different apps bringing users and utility onto the chain. That would be my long term vision of thousands of apps, markets, communities and millions of users. That however is a long way away.
Since I joined three years ago we have seen the exact opposite happen. The price has gone down, the users have left and since the split we have lost some of the apps that were built here. It is by no means a death blow but it has set us back a few steps.
We do still have some great users and apps but the reality of the situation is that we are building from a low point. A low number of users and a low price for the token. The good news is that we have seen some great projects emerge over this period and that the people here now are the ones willing to build up the community again.
We have some absolute genius witnesses in technical terms but we do seem to be missing some business savvy. We have a quality product here that we are giving away for free. The majority of us spend hours every day trying to earn a few hive tokens at 20c which is a great way to pass the time but it would be a lot more attractive prospect at $2.
We have thousands of users posting valuable content to hive every day of the week and under the old system that content would be generating revenue for facebook, youtube ect... My original vision of hive is one where that revenue generated goes back to the users generating the product.
Our data is still valuable but under web3 that value could go back to the community and not a large corporation. That is why I want to see ads on hive.blog.
I don't have the skills to build a front end to hive and monetize it. That is not my area. The good news is that we already have a purpose built front end in hive.blog maintained by the @blocktrades team. A community front end that was created to replace steemit.com. For all their flaws in running a blockchain, the steemit.inc team had done some things very well. @elipowell had brought some business savvy to a group of developers and was beginning to make the site profitable. Unfortunately that profit went to float the company by covering their operating costs but in this case it could be used to add value to the token.
The best marketing tool that we could have is token price. The higher that is, the more people that will look into the project. I've been talking for a long time about an ad buyback campaign using hive.blog as it is a community front end and run by your team as far as I know. One successful thing that the steemit team managed before the mess was to create revenue using ads to halt selling. If we could do it to create buying pressure it would be a huge advertisement with monthly buys. In the long term hive could be a success through its users, dapps, use case and investment opportunities but to get into that position there needs to by something to prop up the price now. Otherwise it will continue to drop slowly due to our smaller community since the fork and we will have a talent drain in users and Devs. High price equals high activity. This brings in more people which in turns increases demand for the token. Which in turn increases the price. The frame work was already built once and I think it was @andrarchy or @roadscape that was highly involved and no doubt would give some advise to male it an easier prospect. Imo it would be great to see some discreet ads and use that to add value back to the token.
Message to @blocktrades.
As it stands we have a much smaller user base than previously. That means that we have a lot less demand for the token than previously but we still produce the same amount as before. Unfortunately unless something changes we will end up with a token that everybody is selling and nobody is buying which will only go one way.
Selling ad space is an easy win and one which @financeleo is already doing on a smaller scale.
With the amount of users that hive has compared to @financeleo, this could be done on a much greater scale. Ads sold on hive.blog and that revenue used to purchase hive from the markets and add more buying pressure.
Sure this might seem small at the moment but think long term. If we can get 120x this on a monthly basis that is $3000 or 12k hive to buy and burn or even buy and lock away in a secure fund for curation or supporting smaller accounts get started. Onboarding or RC. Once it's taken off the markets.
The next thing after that is to advertise the fact that we are doing this. Share it everywhere. 12k hive bought this month. 20k, 50k 100k every month. You start small and keep building on that progress.
If we can show a steady revenue stream and source of income that does two things.
One: it makes it easy to show users how they can earn from sharing content. Where the money comes from.
Two: it makes a far more attractive proposition to investors when they can see growth and turnover.
Now I'm only a small user with small opinions but I do think we are leaving money on the table by not having ads on the hive.blog front end. I love our witnesses and they do some great work behind the scenes but that does not get seen by the rest of the world. Marketing is showing the rest of the world what we are doing well and selling them on that vision.
We as a community create content and that content has a value. Unfortunately we are giving it away right now at a time when we could do with the money. With enough users and demand in the future this would be a different story but for now it's just wasteful when we should be jumping on any opportunity that we can see to promote and add value to hive.
I might just be a small user with a small voice but I will always try to help hive grow in numbers and value. We have a lot of skilled people on this chain and it would be great to bring in those less technical voices that could help to add value through other means than just use case.
