I had a discussion earlier today with a curator who wanted to "earn more" and asked me how he could do that. I initially mistranslated it as "how can I maximize my rewards" so we didn't come off to a good start, after seeing many do so over the years, thinking short term and taking the short way out and still seeing what a lot of autovotes do these days it was a natural reaction unfortunately. To my surprise the curator was wondering what more he could do aside from curate and the occasional posts they create. I told them about our onboarding program (which isn't for everyone) but the main thing that stood out and I could advise him on was being and remaining active, building connections, a rich and genuine engagment both outside and on his own posts, etc.

It feels like that's something many take for granted these days, that the one big value they can give to Hive and themselves in the same go is just using it more. I see people constantly use other socials, mainly braindead scrolling forever and liking random things they see but even on Reddit some do a lot for some random worthless karma points and attention. As in they spend time moderating subreddits, replying to users as to why their submissions didn't land, what they forgot to include, etc, to adhere to the subreddit rules, many are even starting to generate original content and attempting to also promote their other socials in the same go (even though Reddit hates taing people outside of Reddit so most subreddits are against self-promo or even sourcing to the original owner in a comment), you know, shareholder centralized shit. Many also spend hours just commenting, engaging, etc for what? Nothing.

I keep wondering what those users would do if their effort wasn't just met with a little attention and some random points but with actual monetary value. "Hey you went through all the trouble to explain to me what I could do better with this item I purchased today because you're a pro in that field, thank you, have an upvote", while thousands of other readers also learn something new and appreciate the comment with their votes resulting in hundreds of $ of rewards.

Anyway, going a bit off-topic, but I told him that if you can't find anything else to do right now to generate more income, think long term. We at @ocd have already started more and more taking into account users social activity before we curate their content, cause content isn't all there is to being rewarded. Sadly not everyone is as good at placing certain words in the correct order at the right time like @tarazkp (:P) so not everyone is automatically going to have a lot of consumers without having attempted to build an audience, those who do not only show effort and that they've tried to use Hive and well but it also rewards them back eventually and brings value to Hive cause it makes for better content to consume where you can read the post and if you're interested enough continue reading more thoughts from readers and the author on certain topics. It's something I've done on Reddit in forever and many subreddits thrive on mainly that, the comment section. Where as most authors are replaceable and their content can be written by many while at the same time no one gives a shit to read it or engage in it, that's not real value. I'm not against showering new users who may be bigger on the outside with votes, but if they over time don't attempt to use Hive properly or give back some of the value they're getting then it doesn't matter to me much who they are, I am most likely going to be adjusting the rewards down a bit to balance out the value to other users who care enough to try and not take it for granted.

Anyway, comment got long, sorry.