If there is a blog about hive then what is the purpose of this blog? Well my goal is to explain what Hive is in layman's terms. Most of us experienced Hivers explain Hive in a way that we understood it but not all people are like us. Especially people who have no prior knowledge to what cryptocurrency even is.
So What is Hive?
If you are familiar with social medias such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube then Hive is quite similar to those social medias.
Hive in it's most simplest form is a social media platform that rewards it's users for their posts, blogs and contents.
Unlike other social media outlets that doesn't give you any rewards like say Facebook. You posts great pictures of your travels, a picture of something you adore, a video of you having fun in the sea but doesn't give you any form of rewards except for self gratification maybe? You have been posting content for years and yet how much did you earn from it?
Here Hive rewards you for your content with Cryptocurrency in which you can convert to real money. Sounds sketchy isn't it? I mean why would they give away free money right? The thing about Hive is it's not only you getting rewards. All the people who likes your posts here also get their share of the rewards as well. So it's a win-win situation for everyone.
The best part of all is you don't need to invest anything to start blogging or posting content in Hive. Just like in other social medias, account creation is totally FREE. So you can try it for yourself and if you don't like how things are done here then you can honestly just stop and move on.
Feeling a bit interested now? You can make an account for free and you get money from your posts. What more can you ask for?
If you already know what cryptocurrency is then skip to the next part. Basically cryptocurrency is money but in an electronic form, like say money in your Debit Card or an ATM Card. You can't physically see the money inside your card but you know it's there.
You can purchase goods or services with it or you can cash it out if you want your physical money. It is the same for Cryptocurrency, you can cash it out anytime you want. It may not be as fast as an ATM machine but nevertheless you can cash out your money anytime.
The only difference there is that Cryptocurrency is a volatile money, meaning its price can go up and down at any given time. Like lets say you have 1 coin of cryptocurrency which has a value of $1 in the morning but then an hour later its value has decreased to $0.01 then another hour later its price has gone up to $10.
Although not all Cryptocurrency tokens goes up and down that fast but it does happen and it can happen. But the point here is that, in Hive you didn't invest any real money. You post your content, you get Cryptocurrency token for your content and if the price of the token is good enough for you then you can cash out.
Basically in Hive it's almost risk free, I mean even if Hive goes down the drain the only thing that you really lose is a little bit of your time posting your content which similar to what you are already doing in other social media outlets right?
I always hear this when trying to invite people in Hive. It is quite an understandable sentiment but what most people don't understand is you don't need to be a great content creator or blogger to earn in Hive.
While it is true that if you are a great content creator or blogger, the rewards you will get would probably be way higher than your average person but that doesn't mean you can't earn if you are just an average person yourself.
To be honest I am not a content creator myself. If you try to look at my profile, I usually post about my daily day to day life and share pictures of things that I think are interesting.
You can find very interesting things around us everyday if you just stop by and try to look around. Examples of these are Nature, Trees, Plants, Insects, Bugs, Flowers, Cities, Buildings, Cars, Motorcycles, Machines and even simple rocks. There is beauty in everything if you just try to see it.
Here in Hive there is always a place for you, no matter what your Hobbies and things that you like may be. Here in Hive we call these places "Community". These communities were made so that people with the same interest can group together and share their interests to one another.
Even being a woman has a community dedicated to them, where women can share all the things women have in common, their passions, their success stories and day to day life.
Just know that no matter who you may be there is a community that will fit you where you can share your interest without restrictions. There is even a place where you can rant and share all your frustrations in life.
Just know that not all communities here in Hive are active. You can see whether a community is active if they have more than 10 posters and post in that community. These stats are updated regularly so it is a reliable information.
If you are worried about not having a professional camera for taking pictures, then trust me, most of us here are only using our smart phone cameras to take pictures. It is advantageous to have your own professional camera but isn't really a pre-requisite to start in Hive. Honestly I would save my money earned in Hive and buy myself a professional camera someday.
How do I earn in Hive exactly?
* Up Vote
You earn through getting an Up Vote. An Up Vote is similar to Facebook and YouTube "Likes". Every like you get in Hive is an Up Vote and every Up Vote has a monetary value linked to it.
The above image is an example of some of my past blogs/posts. As you can see each of the blogs have different values or what we call rewards, more on this later. The heart you see besides the monetary value enclosed inside the red box is the amount of Likes/Up Votes I got from each of the posts/blogs and the next icon is the number of comments my post/blog have received.
Let us examine the highest paid blog there and click on the heart icon. You will then see the people who Liked/Up Voted your post and as you can see there very clearly. Each up vote have different monetary value in it, some people have very big up vote values while others have small values.
People with big Up Vote values either invested a lot of money in Hive or they have been blogging since Hive started and staked all of their earnings to get bigger Up Vote values. Hold your horses Hive isn't a get rich scheme so don't expect people with big Up Vote values to Up Vote your posts when you start. Unless you post something extraordinary then don't expect them to Up Vote your posts. Some people hunt for big upvote values but as for me I believe in the saying "There is strength in numbers" because I am not a great content creator like I said.
* Down Vote
Down Vote is the opposite of Up Vote. Instead of giving you rewards it will take away rewards from your posts. But don't worry unless you do a grave offense such us Plagiarism and Post Spamming you will not be down voted. Although some people do down votes on a whim but it rarely happens. And if someone does down vote you even if you didn't Spam Posts or Plagiarize then just leave them be and don't get affected by it. But so far I have been blogging for 2 months now I have not yet been down voted so far.
* Rewards
You will receive rewards in your post after 7 days from the day and hour you posted your blog, so there is a 7 day period where people can read your blog and decide whether they want to Up Vote your blog or not.
One thing to remember though is that you won't get all the rewards for yourself. As you can see from the image above, out of the $16 rewards for my post, the Author, which is me, will only receive $8 of rewards and the other $8 will be divided among the Up Voters or what we call Curators. So the rewards payout will be 50% to the Author and 50% to the Curators.
The rewards you will receive will be in the form of HP or Hive Power and HBD or Hive Backed Dollars. 50% of your Author rewards will be in HP and the other 50% will be in HBD.
Don't be confused by this, what you see in the 1st image above is different from the 2nd one is because the 1st image had already been rewarded while the 2nd still has 2 days left before I can get its rewards.
The break down you see there in the 2nd image is just an estimation on how much HP and HBD the blog post will receive. It will still be divided by 50% Author and 50% Curators.
Example: From the 2nd image above which have a $5 content reward
Then the Authors Reward will be divided again 50% of which is in HP and the other 50% is in HBD
50% HP = $1.25 or 0.8055 HP
50% HBD = $1.25 or 1.25 HBD
So all in all the Author will receive 1.25 HBD and 0.8055 HP which amounts to $2.5 at the time you will receive your rewards.
3 Major Tokens in Hive
* Hive Power
Hiver Power determines how much the value of your Up Vote is. So the bigger HP you have the bigger your Up Vote is. So for those people who have an Up Vote value of $1 or more, they have Thousands or Millions of HP in their accounts.
Hive Power is also staked which means you can't withdraw it immediately. You have to withdraw/power down and it takes 13 weeks or 5 months to complete. This is a safe mechanism to make sure rich people who have staked their Hive can't withdraw immediately and crash the market.
Hiver Power is determines how many time you can write blogs, comments or do any form of transaction. So its better if you keep saving your HP to increase your upvote value and do more in Hive.
When you start in Hive you will be limited to 1 post in 3 days, well that's what I have experienced, as you have no HP at the start, but as you post more and get your rewards your HP will also increase. By the time you have saved up to 15 to 50 HP then you can do 1 blog post a day and maybe answer comments in your blog. This process takes a lot of time and to be honest frustrated me at first. I would suggest you ask the one that invited you to Hive to delegate some HP to you when you start your journey in Hive as to not experience the same frustrations I went through.
Delegation means that they will lend you some of their HP. You do not own the HP since they just lend it to you. They can take it back anytime but most of us would wait until you have enough HP on your own so you can do more in Hive.
* Hive Backed Dollars
Hive Backed Dollars as the name suggest is like a dollar form/value but in Hive. Meaning the value of HBD will be $1 or close to it and sometimes it goes more than $1.
Hive Backed Dollars are not staked like Hiver Power which means you can cash it out immediately as soon as you receive them.
* Hive
Hive is the main token in Hive. You can convert your HBD and HP to Hive so you can cash it out. I will not talk on how to cash out right now as it will just complicate things for newbies such as you guys. Just know that all your earnings in hive can be cashed out if you don't want to do Hive anymore.
Things to Remember before you start in Hive
* Avoid Plagiarism at all cost!
The biggest mistake you can do here in hive is Plagiarism. Plagiarism happens when you take other peoples work and make it look like as your own work, word, and thoughts.
An example of Plagiarism is using other people's photo/image without permission. The same goes for just copy and pasting contents from other websites without their permission.
That is not to say that you can't use photos/images from other websites but you must properly cite where you got it from. You can read How To Avoid Plagiarism - A Simple Guide for Hive posted by @adalger to know more about plagiarism and how to properly cite other peoples work. Special thanks to @juanvegetarian for sharing that link to me. I learned a lot from reading it so you guys should try to read it too.
If you have been found out for Plagiarism then there is a very high chance that your account will be locked, meaning you can't do anything, even transferring your funds. There is a group here in Hive called the Hive Watchers and they will find out if you are Plagiarizing because that's their job, to find stupid people who want to ruin our beloved Hives' image.
* Avoid Post Spamming at all cost!
The second biggest mistake you can do here in Hive is spamming posts. Spamming posts occurs when you:
Post similar looking posts to different communities on Hive
Reusing Photos, Images and Content from your past posts and make it look like a new a post.
Posting topics that doesn't belong to the Community you are posting to. Like don't post anything related to plants in the gaming community.
Posting only pictures and only a few words except on DBuzz community as this is allowed in that community but all other communities will not tolerate this kind of behavior.
Posting more than 3 times a day except on DBuzz community has you are allowed to post up to 4 times a day in DBuzz community.
There is an account called the spaminator which seeks out post spammers and you will be down voted until you don't earn any rewards from your posts so don't EVER do it.
* Write Original Content Only
When writing a blog, post or content be sure that it is original. Original means that:
Use photos/images that were taken by you
Write your own thoughts and ideas on the topic
Write things that you have personally experienced
Again you can use other peoples work as long as you properly cite them to avoid Plagiarism.
* Read other peoples blogs and learn from what they are doing.
I couldn't stress this enough. Just try to read other peoples blogs to see how they write their contents, to get an idea to how you should write your own content too. I would suggest before doing anything else on Hive you "MUST" read How To Get A Great Start on the Hive Blockchain posted by @castleberry. You will really learn a lot and it will help you on our journey here on Hive. Special thanks to @indayclara for sharing me the link to that blog. It was a food for thought for me and I have learned quite a lot from reading it. I really regretted not reading other peoples blogs before I started here.
* Find your niche
Before you dive in the world of Hive, you should try to find what your niche is. A niche is like a topic that you are comfortable with. Like if you go to the gym then that's your niche is fitness. If you like to paint or make arts then art is your niche. Stick to your passions and interests and the content creator sleeping inside of you will make up on its own.
Finding your niche is important because before you post anything on Hive you need to find a Community that will fit you niche. As stated above in the Post Spamming section, you need to post your blog in the proper community. If you ask the person who invited you here in Hive I'm sure they know a Community that would fit you and your posts.
Finding your niche and posting in the right community also increases the chance of your posts getting noticed and receive more Up Votes as people in that community understands your passion and interests.
Final Notes and Personal Thoughts
So now you know what Hive is. What's next? I will teach you guys how to create your own accounts in Hive for my next blog and maybe teaching you how to do your first post in Hive which is Very Important. So stay tuned 😎
And for those who are much more experienced than me in Hive that are reading this. I would love to hear you reactions on my blog. What other things do you think newbies should know before starting in Hive? What are the things that you think you should have done before you started blogging in Hive?
I am honestly just a newbie myself. I have been blogging for 2 months now and I see the great opportunity that Hive brings to the table even for an average person like me. So I want to invite my family members, relatives and friends to join in Hive that is why I made this blog and my next few blogs which will be more Hive basics and tutorials, specifically for people like them who doesn't know anything related to blogging and cryptocurrency. Maybe in this process I might help other people as well, especially to my fellow Filipino countrymen.
I will be updating this blog when I find new information or new ways to explain to newcomers what Hive is.
Hello guys I am Pink Hub and I love all that is pink.
Show me pink and I'll show you a 😍
Living in the province of Cebu in the Philippines.
I graduated in Bachelors of Science in Information Technology Major in Programming.
I'm a Businessman, a Computer Enthusiast, a Gamer and a Programmer.
I love to learn new things so reading is one of my passions.
I'm an open-minded person so you can just go ahead and throw all your thoughts at me in the comments. I welcome all comments good or bad with open arms and legs 😁
Face your problems, but if the problem is your face. Worry not I can edit 😇
What is Hive for Dummies: For my Future Invites | Ecency
@ura-soul first before moving on to read this blog.
@adalger to know more about plagiarism and how to properly cite other peoples work. Special thanks to 
@juanvegetarian for sharing that link to me. I learned a lot from reading it so you guys should try to read it too.
@castleberry. You will really learn a lot and it will help you on our journey here on Hive. Special thanks to 
@indayclara for sharing me the link to that blog. It was a food for thought for me and I have learned quite a lot from reading it. I really regretted not reading other peoples blogs before I started here.