I started my Hive journey last January after creating an account via Leofinance recommended by noise.cash. It was a very confusing time for me. I had signed up to a website called Leofinance, that paid out rewards in Leo token, however people were telling me I needed to stake something called Hive. Eh?!
Luckily the Hive and Leo discord communities helped me get started and I was able to start creating content.
I started on Leofinance making 12 crypto related articles in a week for little reward, and pretty much burning myself out. During that time I posted a short article to #Hivepets about my cat Domino.
In one swoop it had nearly made more rewards than all 12 Leo articles combined. And it had been a topic that was much easier for me to write about.
It wasn't until around April that I started posting on Hive more consistently. I started logging my powerlifting progress in #Exhaust and I enjoyed the curation and mentions in the weekly roundup from the Exhaust account. It's what made Hive stand out from Leo, if you can find the right communities for your content, it's easier to get read by people that take an interest in what you have to say.
Around the same time I discovered the amazing #TeamUk. A small but dedicated team helping British citizens and ex-pats to find exposure on Hive. Their bots curation trail is one of the very few I follow.
If you're in the UK and interested, join the discord for more information https://discord.gg/8CVx2Am
Then the event that made me nearly exclusively post to Hive: I went to America for 3 months.
During that time I was too busy to keep an eye on the crypto markets and was trying to find somewhere to post pictures from my travels. I racked up a huge streak on #Photoaday but didn't get very many upvotes. Eventually I tried #HAVEYOUBEENHERE which I had posted in before and received no votes, however this time I used Pinmapple.
The Pinmapple team mentioned my articles in their weekly roundup and I started receiving the biggest rewards of my blogging career.
Two bronze and four honourable mentions, this must be how it feels to be good at sports as a kid
This changed my outlook on Hive massively. I realised it was less about building followers that upvote you blindly, but thinking carefully about which community your content belongs in, and using the bots and tools that the communities provide. One of my goals for 2022 will be creating and growing my own community.
You gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers
During my first year on Hive I have powered up 882 Hive power. Plus staking 500HP to Leovoter to ensure my Leo stack grows despite not posting as much content there. I'm a very impatient person and didn't take part in a single Hive power up day, so another goal for this year will be joining in on that.
Must. resist. urge. to press. claim button.
2021 was all about finding what worked for me and learning to turn the ideas in my head into written words. Now that I've got the basics of that down, I've started onboarding people that I know.
I introduced 
And much more recently 
I look forward to writing another one of these next January!