Since I have joined the blockchain, more than 5 years ago, I have heard the following sentence quite regularly:
I came for the money but I stayed because of the community
I can totally relate to that and it's also true for me. As long as I can remember, when we tried to onboard people to hive, the monetary argument was used. Experience has shown that this simply doesn't work.
Why the monetary argument doesn't work
If somebody joins Hive for money reasons, the main motivation is to earn as much money as possible for as little effort as possible. They probably see the post payouts in the trending page and expect something in a similar return range.
The person will probably start with an introduction post that might actually reach quite a big payout. There are some actors who look out for these posts and reward them handsomely. This is great but there comes the first difficulty already. Why do I have to wait for 7 days to get a payout? Why do I get only 50% of the payout? Why is 50% of it powered up and I need 13 weeks to get the money?
Immediately, there are a lot of questions and very few answers to be found easily. If this didn't bother the person, then comes the next challenge with the second post. Probably this post will reach a much lower payout and it will be same for post 3, 4 and 5. If the person is still around by then, it means that the reality has sunk in and another motivation made the person stay on Hive. In most cases however, the Hive adventure stops here and on a bad basis. The person is disapointed with the results and will certainly not recommend the blockchain to others.
This is the big issue with Hive, it's the bad retention rate of new users.
What if we didn't try to sell the money?
So far, whenever it comes to promoting Hive, the monetary aspect was used as a main argument. But let's be honest, you can earn on Hive but it takes work and commitment. Most of the people won't earn more than peanuts in the first months on Hive.
What if we try to attract people with what Hive is really good at? Something that is felt from day one on the chain? Namely the community?
Not everybody is looking for money
Of course many out there are looking for money. But is Hive really capable of helping these people?
There are also a lot of people who feel lonely, who want to belong somewhere, who want to talk, exchange and interact. There are such people in all countries and all cultures and these people are not interested in the money in the first place. If they earn something on the way, it's even better but their main motivation is of a social nature.
I believe that Hive can really help these people and these people can help Hive. Imagine you join a community where you want to belong to. What would you do first? You would try to read some content and then give a comment because what you want is build relationships. You then hope that the comment is answered. Little by little this person can meet others through the comment sections and build relationships within a community.
Such people could bring a lot of added value to the existing authors in the form of comments and interaction. They could grow on the way and later also create their posts and hope to get comments.
I think that onboarding to Hive would have much better retention if we didn't use the monetary argument but rather a social argument. We should put forward that Hive is:
- A place where everybody is welcome
- Where you can chose your community of real people from all over the world
- Where you can interact and engage and make friends
Isn't that exactly why we are all still active on Hive after many years ?
What do you think?
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