I'd been doing "blogging" for quite some time, for 10 or maybe even 15 years. Though I've never tried to create my "personal brand" or something like that, by now I've produced a few thousands of blog posts, in various places, on various topics, in several different languages (it's apart from my numerous forum posts, comments, and the like elsewhere). I had blogs at Google's Blogger.com, at Livejournal.com, and don't remember where else, I run self-hosted blogs on Drupal, WordPress, and on my own self-written platform. Though blogging hasn't brought me any substantial money, it was a fun hobby to make your voice heard by the World.
Gradually I grew older, I got more responsibilities and less free time, and by 2017 I'd nearly stopped all my blogging activities. And only 2017 crypto-hype and blockchain-based blogging platforms made me resume my online writings, first on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and then on various cabbages and kings.
I must note that below I'm not talking about "earnings" or "who pays the most". Earning a living from blogging is indeed possible, but it's a kind of serious business, it requires a lot of work and investments, and like any other business blogging business is not where everyone can easily succeed. On the other hand, $0.5 or even $5 of "tips" for an article can be called "earnings" only technically.
Well, when it all started back in 2017, I've found Medium. At that time they had many articles on crypto and their pages often were on top of Google. I created an account and made a couple of posts. But for some strange reason, I couldn't read many posts there. As far as I could understand, Medium has a limited amount of daily reads for ordinary users, and you have to buy premium to read everything you want without restrictions. Maybe it's good for business, but I don't like it. Besides, what if my posts also have limited reads? I left Medium for good.
At about the same time I've found Publish0x -- when it was about crypto, their pages often were on top of Google. At first, I didn't even know that it was a blogging platform, I learned it only when I tried to find where they take their articles from. Then I started to post my articles there because it was very simple. A simple sign-up and login, no need for any wallets, plugins, accounts or powers. Notifications and following. A large crypto-centric community. And tipz, of course. The only thing I was actually missing there were bookmarks -- but at last the guys implemented it as well! But unfortunately, they also spoiled the posting interface a bit -- to see a preview you have to "save and preview" and back, TinyMCE seems not understanding Markdown anymore, my Grammarly plugin doesn't work there anymore, and so on. While I still hold Publish0x as my main blogging platform, I now prefer to prepare my articles elsewhere and to copy-paste them to Publish0x.
Then I found Steemit -- only to learn that I have either to pay for an account or to wait for a couple of weeks to get my sign-up "approved". Well, I've been waiting for like two months -- nothing. I could have been still waiting, but I've got a free Steem account. Unfortunately for Steemit, I've got it right before the Steem/Hive fork, then I moved to Hive platforms and neglected Steem for a long time. As I see, today Steemit is rather popular in East Asia, but I don't know those languages and I'm not sure that my articles will get much attention there. Besides, I don't like their posting interface: I always have to scroll down to see a preview.
I've had trouble with Hive.blog from the very beginning. For some reason, many of the browsers I use (and I use many of them, on various OS-es) simply refuse to connect to the site. I have neither time nor desire to investigate the issue, all the more that I have no such troubles with other Hive-based platforms.
The same can be said about my experience with Read.Cash. I learned about Read.cash from a hype wave at Publish0x, I created an account there and made a couple of articles. Guess what? My articles were not even published! Read.cash seem to have some kind of "moderation", and an article must be "approved" for publishing. I have neither time nor desire to play email ping-pongs with various "moderators", even less I want any "approvals". I left Read.cash for those who can handle all this shit better.
I moved to Peakd. While Peakd is similar to other Hive-based platforms, it has a very good publishing interface. A very neat editing and preview windows, HTML/Markdown switch, embeds, templates, scheduled posts, and working Grammarly. Plus bookmarks and various Hive-related tools. I used Peakd quite a lot until I found Leofinance.
I learned about Leofinance from a hype wave at Publish0x. As usual, at first, I didn't pay much attention to it. A "wrapped Leo", "LMM miners" or a price pump were not enough to get me interested. However, later I decided to have a look -- and found what I've been looking for! A publishing interface similar to Peakd, but simpler, and integration with other Hive-based platforms. Also I've found LeoDex, which is far better for me than Hive-Engine. And of course, the tipz. The only problem I face at Leofinance is images -- something seems to be wrong with the image hosting...
Today I prepare all my articles at Leofinance, then I repost them to Publish0x first, and then (if I'm not too lazy that day) elsewhere. That's why I sometimes get accused of "plagiarism", while the readers see Leo's promo slogan below my articles.
