Are you somebody who enjoys the process of writing? Maybe you're a person who likes to write about travel, photography, culture, economics, or something entirely different. Perhaps at some point in the past you even had your own blog on an open platform like Wordpress, and maybe you had thought about the possibility of making money with your content.
Until about a decade ago, the only way to earn revenue from your blog was to seek out company sponsorships or insert online ads into your posts. While these methods did provide a way to monetize your content, payments were often inefficient and unreliable, and your website could have been demonetized at any time if your sponsors disagreed with your message.
The invention of Bitcoin has led to a lot of changes, including how we transact with one another and monetize our efforts. It's now possible for us to make secure payments to each other without the need of a bank or payment service. Moreover, the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin has been innovated upon to create smart contract platforms like Ethereum, and decentralized blogging platforms like HIVE, which allow you to earn crypto directly for your efforts.
A Little Hive History
Dan Larimer (pictured on the left), who is ultimately one of the co-founders of HIVE, made a name for himself after inventing a blockchain called BitShares back in 2014. Dan is also the founder of EOS, a delegated-proof-of-stake blockchain that has been the foundation for projects like WAX, Telos, and Ultra.
Dan worked with co-founder Ned Scott to come up with the idea of a STEEM, a blogging platform based on a decentralized and permissionless network. The idea being that its users would be rewarded in crypto tokens for not only publishing content, but for curating and commenting on it as well. The STEEM blockchain was launched in March of 2016, followed shortly after by its front-end interface SteemIt.
We should cover the fact that STEEM and SteemIt are two distinct entities. STEEM is a decentralized, permissionless blockchain that is composed of hundreds of witnesses that, similar to Bitcoin's miners, are paid in crypto for validating network transactions. SteemIt, on the other hand, is merely the web interface that allows you to interact with the STEEM blockchain, and there are plenty of alternatives to choose from.
STEEM and its blogging community were doing just peachy until early 2020 when Justin Sun (founder of TRON) purchased the platform from co-founder Ned. While technically a blockchain cannot be purchased (because its owned by the community), the deal did include approximately 10% of the total supply of STEEM tokens, giving the new owner significant power over the network.
With the help of CZ, Justin then managed to use the STEEM coins under the custody of Binance to vote off the network witnesses he no longer wanted. This was essentially a hostile takeover of the network that set off a series of events that ultimately led to a network fork, and served as a reminder as to why we shouldn't keep our coins on exchanges.
The majority of the community was opposed Justin's actions, and after considering all options decided to fork the STEEM blockchain over to HIVE, eliminating the founder's share of the coins in the process. Afterwards, a large portion of the witnesses stopped validating transactions for STEEM, and joined the new HIVE network in protest. Both blockchains still exist to this day, with STEEM ranked #415 and HIVE ranked #373 on CoinGecko.
How To Earn Money On HIVE
With all that crypto history aside, to start writing, commenting on, and curating content on HIVE, you will first need to create an account. Creating a HIVE account used to be a fairly difficult process, however now it is much easier now, as you can sign up for free using an existing social media account.
A number of communities exist on the HIVE blockchain, where users write about a variety of topics. InLeo (formerly LeoFinance), where this post will be published, is focused more on finance and crypto content, and has nearly 20,000 subscribers.
After you create an account, you can start posting articles to these different HIVE communities, and potentially start earning rewards in the form of $HIVE coins. Keep in mind that HIVE is a web3 platform, meaning you will need to install a crypto wallet and manage your private keys in order to post and maintain ownership of your account.
Some communities have their own token atop the HIVE blockchain, similar to the ERC-20 tokens that exist atop Ethereum. For example, the InLeo community has the $LEO token, which are awarded to the users who produce, comment on, and curate content. In addition to $HIVE rewards, InLeo members also earn $LEO tokens for their contributions to the community.
Based on pre-determined network rules built into the code of the HIVE blockchain, a certain number of the $HIVE coins are generated on a daily basis and are distributed to the network's content producers and curators. The rest of the rewards are allocated to the witnesses who validate transactions, stakers who keep their HIVE powered up, and other network expenditures. The $HIVE token has value because it gives users influence on the network, and is traded on crypto exchanges.
The number of $HIVE and $LEO tokens you will earn on a post depends on the number of likes you receive, and the voting power of the users who upvote you. For example, an upvote from someone who has 10,000 HIVE staked to their account will earn you a lot more than a user who has only 1 HIVE staked. Below you can see $HIVE that has been recently distributed to various posts.
You may notice that some well-known authors who have been around for a while are receiving upvotes immediately after posting an article. This is because some users have set up bots to automatically upvote (curate) posts of authors who have either created great content in the past, or continue to do so today. This makes it harder for new writers to get discovered and rewarded, and is difficult to combat. It may take a while before you start earning an significant amount of rewards, but consistently posting content should be key to overcoming this.
After you have received your crypto rewards for participating, you can either stake them to the network to compound your earnings and influence, or send them to an exchange and trade them for other cryptocurrencies that can easily be converted to (filthy) fiat currencies. I expect that more individuals and small businesses will want to accept these coins directly for goods and services, as fiat currencies continue to lose value.
The Immutable Aspect
Aside from the potential $HIVE and $LEO rewards you may earn, another positive aspect of blogging on HIVE is that your posts will live on forever. Each article you write is broadcast to all HIVE witnesses and your content cannot be deleted by a single central authority (unlike on Instagram or YouTube). In other words, you don't have to worry about your posts being censored on HIVE.
That said, a front-end interface (website) to the HIVE blockchain could, in theory, block access to your account's content. However, the beauty of a decentralized blockchain like HIVE is that a new website could spring up from anywhere and reproduce the content that was blocked. As of right now there are multiple websites from which you can access content on HIVE, including peakd and ecency, but there is really no limit to the number of front-ends HIVE could have.
So in addition to the chance of earning rewards for your contributions to HIVE, you will also have an immutable blog that will last for generations. As we move further into the future, it will no longer make sense to produce content for centralized tech companies. Therefore, instead of essentially working for big tech and their shareholders, you should participate in the decentralized networks that pay you directly and give you true ownership of your data.
If you learned something new in this article, be sure to read my other posts on finance and crypto here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.
Until next time...
Resources
Dan and Ned YouTube Interview About SteemIt [1]
Steem vs Hive Image [2]
Monetization Image [3]