Get people to come and join you on Hive because there are lots of cool articles about gardening and homesteading. Or because there are lots of good articles about pets so you market to pet lovers. Or if you happen to be LeoFinance, you market to people who are interested in finance and investment, particularly in crypto.

I like this and I hear you. It brought me back to why I joined Steemit back in 2017 (and that was after a year of lurking starting in 2016). I joined because I was tired of my articles being stolen over on Blogger where I'd been writing for a few years.

They would scrape my website, copy my posts, and then publish them under their own byline.

So when I saw this little experiment in blogging+crypto, I was hesitant after being burned so recently, so I hung back for a year or so and watched to make sure it wasn't a scam (and to learn best practices), before jumping in in July, 2017.

You're right, but I also weave pro-Hive posts in with my original content once in awhile, because I'm genuinely happy to have found this place. I take the long view on Hive and honestly feel that our best days are ahead of us; one new user at a time. :)