Long before I published my first book I was writing poetry. The act of putting my thoughts and emotions down on paper served as both an outlet and an escape for me.
When I was feeling depressed about my crappy job, yet another rejection slip from a publisher, or still living with my parents writing a poem gave me a sense of accomplishment. Admittedly, for those first few years most of what I wrote was pretty cringe-worthy but I enjoyed it enough to keep trying. After years of practice I eventually got better.
By the time I began offering my bespoke poetry service in 1998 I had been at it for almost a decade. I thought maybe it was time to try to sell some. I used a free WordPress site and a still relatively new thing called the internet to market a personalized poetry service
I didn't know it back in 1998 but there’s this thing called first mover advantage. Little did I know taking that action, at that particular point in time, would one day land me on the first page of Google search results when anyone on Earth searched the term “Personalized Poetry”. I’ve written nearly three hundred of these poems over the past twenty years.
Thanks to Google every few months a new personalized poetry order magically lands in my inbox. Poetry has been the one constant in my life through weddings, divorce, moves, job changes, everything.
I don’t know why I never thought of it before but today something dawned on me. I feel the same way about blogging and the Hive community as I feel about writing poetry.
Then I thought, Why not accept Hive as a payment type for the bespoke poems?
So this morning I clicked the edit button on my Personalized Poetry page and made it official. I’m now accepting Hive and it feels like a very good fit!
If you own an online business that offers goods/services or even a side gig please consider experimenting by accepting Hive as payment. If you do make a post about it, please tag it with #nowacceptinghive and also share it on Twitter with the $hive cashtag.
Always remember, there's this thing called first mover advantage. ; )
With Gratitude,
Eric Vance Walton
(Gifs sourced from Giphy.com)
Alarm Clock Dawn, one of the first full length novels published on the blockchain, and the book that started it all for me can be found HERE. Or Click Here to read it for free on the Steemit blockchain
My book on meditation, The Perfect Pause, is priced at $12.99 (paperback) and $4.99 (eBook). Buy the paperback and receive the eBook for free!
