If you are onboarding someone to Hive the first question is typically Why Bother. It is a very good question. Especially important question because there are very good social media platforms out there which are way WAY easier to learn.
Of course the response has always been that HIVE is more rewarding. People can reliably make some money on HIVE through curation. That IS true but it is not easy and not very much.
Then the question becomes: How much is realistic to earn on Hive?
And of course the next question is why am I brining it up in the Great Little Dragon area? Well, I'll answer this question next post along with why I think it is still worth it even if they amount annually is very low.
Now primarily I'm aiming this article at one person:
A brand new 25 reputation user who was trying to make posts and start off with 0 HP and 0 Hive.
She started with an Ecency account and I can almost guarantee that without a mentor she will be gone before we see half a dozen posts.
She is living in a country with serious economic issues right now and wants to make some money. That makes sense. However, there are two problems:
With proper investment? It is still insufficient but at least there is promise of something stable in the future.
Now let me get into Posting and Curation.
Now defining good content on Hive can be a challenge. I don't want to define good as smooth and polished because many writers aren't that great at writing. More and more the default is just going to ChatGPT and that is absolutely now what Hive is for (at least from the consensus I've heard).
In my opinion? I like to curate content which shows a person's effort, thought and personality. I will take authentic VS polished every single time. As for effort? 500 words and an image to cap it off is usually the minimum bar I use but every curator is different. Also different communities have different standards.
Actifit is more about getting 5000 steps and using their app. More forgiving for smaller posts although pictures while you are out getting your steps are pretty much expected.
LikeTu is much more like a "picture of the day" and as such it is primarily an image with a description underneath. Image mandatory. Text? Much less is required.
Hive Learners regular prompt? 500 words with strong flow and images are usually the minimum requirement.
.... and if you work hard and make good content regularly ... you can still end up making nothing. In the end it all comes down to curators. No curator = No upvotes = no money.
Now there are many curation accounts on Hive. Many communities have their own curation account to watch the community and reward good posts.
For actifit its is the 
For Hive Leaners is it the 
and this community uses 
.... and there are many more curation accounts on Hive. Catching the eye of a curation account or 20 is the best way to actually make money on Hive.
What's the best way of catching the eye of curation accounts? See what their community interests are and join in.
If you are registered with Hive Learners and write a good post on their post prompts? There is a very strong chance the curation bot will show up.
If you post with actifit and get 5000 steps the actifit curator will show up.
Hold EDSI tokens and write good posts long enough and the 
But also understand that curators want to support people who are actively supporting HIVE. Curators want to support people making HIVE better for everyone and not actively trying to leech as much value as possible. There is a metric in people's account information called a Ke value. Mine is 1.93
Basically the KE value shows how much you have made on HIVE compared to how much you have removed from Hive. Typically the higher the number the more value you have extracted. Nothing wrong with extracting value... I'm just saying that curators do look at it and keeping it lower can be a good thing.
Well: On my main account I regularly post on Actifit (daily) and Hive Learners (3x/week). I have garnered the attention of a few curators but my follower list is very small. Basically the income I reliably get is:
Add that up and ... $3.65 / week or about $190 annually
and of that $190 only HALF is available immediately. The other half is locked as HP which can be cashed out but it takes 13 weeks.
Assuming posting every single day and making three long well thought out posts weekly. How much time that take? Is it worth it to spend those hours for $190?
Is there a way to make it more profitable? Well...
... I'll write about that tomorrow :)
... about what I want to accomplish with the Great Little Dragons community :)
@yuli8308