I'm writing this post in response to the #hivehighlight2023 challenge presented by @hiveio. You can read about it here.
As an introduction, regular readers of my newsletter and Web3 social media outposts know that I've been reporting my Web3 social media earnings every month since January 2022. Last year, I earned a total of $1,614 and some change from posting to nine different Web3 social media platforms including Hive. That list also includes Actifit, which is a part of the Hive blockchain but since I earned AFIT as well as Hive, I treated it separately. It also included Coil, which has since seen its sunset. I've also conducted Presearch searches and include PRE earnings on these reports.
My top earning platform in 2022 was Hive. My earnings that year on the Hive.blog social blogging platform totaled $547.80878 for the entire year. Other platforms, however, showed respectable earnings, too.
- gFam = $323.18593 in XRP
- Publish0x = $209.25 in ETH, AMPL, and SPOT
- Torum = $228.77 in XTM
- Presearch = $103.64 in PRE
All other platforms I posted to in 2022 earned less than $100 each. Below, I'll report on my 2023 earnings. Once again, we see that Hive beat all the other platforms hands down. Let's see how they stack up.
Caveat: These earnings to not represent the entire year because I haven't tallied December's earnings yet. A full report will be published in January.
Web3 Social Media Platforms I Used in 2023
I wanted to start this part of the report by saying I played around on far more platforms in 2023 than I did in 2022. That has certainly impacted my earnings, but not, as you might expect, in the positive. I earned less in 2023 than I did in 2022. I believe the reason for that is that I spread my time per platform around rather than focus on just a few with better potential (at least, that's how I started the year). When I narrowed my focus to fewer platforms, I earned more on the platforms I continued posting on.
The platforms I posted to in 2023 include:
- Actifit (tokens earned = AFIT, HIVE, and HBD)
- Cent Pages (USD)
- DeSo (DESO)
- gFam (XRP)
- Hive (HIVE, HBD, and myriad Level 2 tokens)
- Housefly (I don't remember the token)
- Mirror (ETH)
- Odysee (LBC)
- Paragraph (MATIC)
- Publish0x (ETH, AMPL, SPOT, and OP)
- Read and Noise Cash (BCH)
- Readl (MATIC)
- Torum (XTM)
- Coil (USD)
- Presearch (PRE)
As you can see, I played around on far more platforms. Somewhere in there, I also played around on Bastyon a little bit. That's a total of 16 platforms, but many of them I only used for a few months rather than the entire year. The ones I stuck with the whole year include Actifit, gFam, Hive, Paragraph, Publish0x, Torum, and Presearch.
Coil sunset its protocol in March. Despite liking it, I was forced to stop using it due to the sunset. DeSo and Housefly I tried for a month but quickly lost interest. Mirror is a good platform with decent potential, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work for me, especially since I started using Paragraph at the same time. Paragraph seemed to work better for my publishing needs. Read and Noise Cash simply became ghost towns, so I abandoned them. Readl worked for a while, then I began experiencing technical difficulties. That's when I quit using it. Since then, I've sold all the NFT books I'd uploaded to the platform. I may give it another try in 2024.
Cent Pages isn't bad, but I found Paragraph much better for my needs. After syncing my YouTube videos to Odysee, I managed to earn a few cents, but it hasn't done anything since.
All of that leads me to my current situation and I'm nearly to the point of focusing entirely on Hive. In 2024, I will continue to post to Hive, Paragraph, and a few others. Although, I may drop some of the others at some point (yet to be determined). The one platform I do not see myself dropping is Hive. Keep reading to find out why.
Why Hive Is My Favorite Platform Going Into 2024
To fully understand why Hive continues to be my favorite Web3 social platform, it helps to get a look at what's happening on other platforms. The rest of this post will focus on my 2023 earnings for each platform.
Actifit (AFIT)
My Actifit earnings have mostly been in Hive and HBD, with some earnings in AFIT, the native token.
AFIT is a Hive Layer-2 token. Initially, I was able to track my AFIT earnings and, at the end of each month, ascertain the USD value of the AFIT tokens I earned that month. That changed when CoinMarketCap de-listed AFIT and I was no longer able to put a dollar value on my AFIT earnings. That happened around March. So, for the first three months of the year, I was able to earn about 18.95 cents in AFIT tokens.
AFIT token earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $.18
Cent Pages (USD)
For the most part, I liked Cent Pages, but I did experience a few disappointments. One of the major ones was the hoops I had to jump through to style my posts. It took a long time for the small amount of earnings I could acquire. I still have my page, but I haven't posted to it since April.
USD earnings on Cent Pages for 2023 = $3.80
Diamond App (DESO)
I started using the Diamond App and earning DESO in January. Right away, I didn't like it. I abandoned DESO after one month.
DESO token earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $.09
gFam (XRP)
If I'm able to cash out huge XRP rewards from the forthcoming bull market (which appears to have already begun), it will entirely be because of gFam. I earned $31.25 in XRP on gFam in January 2023. After that, because of some changes in how XRP was distributed on the platform, my earnings have declined significantly. Still, those earnings were respectable. I've raked in $78.64425705 in USD value in 2023 thus far.
XRP token earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $78.64
Hive (HIVE, HBD)
Now you're going to see why Hive is still my favorite Web3 social platform.
Hive earnings fall into three major buckets: Author Rewards, Curation Rewards, and HBD interest. The rewards are distributed in HIVE and Hive-Backed Dollars (HBD), which are the Hive blockchain's stablecoin. I report my earnings in three categories (HIVE, HBD, and HBD interest).
The interest part comes from the HBD savings account. On Hive, everyone on the blockchain can lock HBD earned into a savings account that pays 20 percent APY amortized monthly. In other words, I receive and HBD interest payout approximately every 30 days. When I do, those interest earnings go right back into my HBD savings account to accrue interest. Author and curation rewards are distributed as 50 percent HIVE and 50 percent HBD, although witnesses occasionally change the payout scheme to distribute rewards entirely in one or the other based on the economics at the time. Here's what I've earned on the Hive blockchain in 2023:
- HIVE = $145.75678590
- HBD = $142.99742670
- HBD interest = $85.85472400
Every month, all HIVE I earn on the platform goes into my staking account, a process called Powering Up. All HBD I earn goes into my HBD savings account.
In order to Power Up, one must agree to lock in one's HIVE until one decides to Power Down, which unstakes the HIVE in 1/13 percentile increments. One can stop the Power Down process at any time, but the process is designed to allow Hive users to liquify their staked assets at any time. By distributing the process over a 13-week schedule, the blockchain prevents a catastrophic breakdown of the economy when a large number of users implement a Power Down process at the same time.
By the same token, to add HBD into the savings account, one must lock it for an indeterminate period of time. To pull it out, there is a 3-day lock period.
To put a period on this, my total 2023 earnings on Hive, in USD value, amounts ... (drumroll) ...
Hive earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $374.59
Okay, that doesn't beat the $615.85 I earned in 2022, but $500 of that was for press release writing. Take that out and my rewards earnings for 2022 were $115.85. My 2023 rewards were far more than the previous year and were far more than anything I earned on other platforms. In fact, if you subtract my Hive earnings from my total 2023 income on all Web3 social platforms, I earned only $342.95 on all other platforms combined, slightly less than what I earned on Hive for the year.
Hopefully, you can see why Hive is my favorite Web3 social media platform.
Mirror (ETH)
When I played around on Mirror prior to 2023, it was on the Ethereum blockchain. I lost interest right away. But when I learned that Mirror had migrated to Optimism, I decided to give it another try. I earned $21.586672 in one month (May 2023), which isn't bad. But I didn't do so well in April and June. That's not due to any negatives on the part of Mirror. I simply couldn't figure out how to incorporate Mirror's focus on literary NFTs into my author business model effectively. As a result, I had one good month out of three.
I'm confident, Mirror could be a great earning platform for me if I gave it an honest try. But, at this point, I'm sold out on Hive.
Total ETH earnings for 2023 on Mirror (rounded down) = $22.91
Odysee (LBC)
There's not much to say about Odysee except that I just haven't earned much on my videos, and it's mostly because I'm not active everyday.
Total LBC earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $.01
Paragraph (MATIC)
Paragraph is a much more consistent earner for me than Mirror, primarily because of this newsletter. Still, I haven't done as well there as I would like, but it's mostly because I am stretched for time and haven't been able to make use of all of its features. Still, it wasn't a terrible year.
Total MATIC earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $.35.88
Publish0x (ETH, AMPL, SPOT, OP)
Like Hive, my earnings on Publish0x fall into several categories. Unlike Hive, Publish0x is much more Web2 than Web3, albeit with a cryptocurrency focus. As far as earnings go, it's been my second best platform for 2023. My earnings for each token on the platform for 2023 have been:
- ETH = $54.87268297
- AMPL = $34.1131000
- SPOT = $56.6247000
- OP = $13.08
In November, Publish0x migrated off the Ethereum blockchain and onto Optimism. When it did, it replaced AMPL and SPOT with OP. In my opinion, that was a great move and improved the platform tremendously. It makes Publish0x my second favorite crypto-focused social media platform.
Total earnings for 2023 on Publish0x (rounded down) = $158.69
Read/Noise Cash (BCH)
Wanting to spend more time on Hive and Publish0x, I abandoned these two ghost towns after February. Plus, it didn't help that Noise.Cash became Noise.app and turned earnings into a wallet-to-wallet tipping system. I earned less than 1 cent in February, down from $4.33 in January.
Total earnings for 2023 on Publish0x (rounded down) = $4.33
Readl (MATIC)
Since Readl is an e-book publishing platform, my earnings on the platform are tied directly to my book publishing schedule. Initially, I managed to earn a few dollars publishing e-books, then my earnings dropped and when I started having issues uploading new books, I didn't see any more earnings until December when I sold my last two remaining Web3 Social e-books as NFTs.
Total MATIC earnings for 2023 on Readl (rounded down) = $19.81
Torum (XTM)
Despite being a consistent earner, Torum doesn't earn me much. I continue to post there primarily because I have 5,000+ followers, and growing.
Total XTM earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $6.25
Coil (USD)
My biggest disappointment this year is the sunsetting of Coil. Not so much a platform, I liked Coil for its monetization protocol allowing me to monetize my wife's and my travel-related YouTube channel and my websites. But, the product went away in March along with my few cents-a-month earnings that I literally didn't have spend any time on pursuing.
Total earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $0.16
Presearch (PRE)
Presearch is not a social media platform. It is a search engine. I report my earnings on Presearch because I use it a lot for searches and earn a few PRE tokens every time I do so.
Total PRE earnings for 2023 (rounded down) = $12.14
That concludes my 2023 Web3 social media earnings report. My total earnings this year (through November) have been $717.54875586. I've earned a little more on Hive Layer-2 tokens, on which I have not reported simply because most of them are worthless. The total value of those tokens, as of right now, are $5.70. That's earnings over a 2-year period. Still, you can add that $5.70 to my total Hive earnings and it's one more reason Hive is my favorite Web3 social media platform.
Monetization, however, is only one benefit of Web social media. There's also decentralization and censorship-resistance, both of which are features of the Hive blockchain with benefits of their own. Hive beats most other platforms on those benefits, as well.
Hive Will Be My Main Focus in 2024
As you can see, Hive is my top-earning Web3 social media platform. That, along with its censorship-resistance benefits, makes it my favorite platform. The ability to monetize my content and earn based on a skill that I possess and enjoy exercising is a huge benefit. I will be looking for other ways to monetize my activities on the Hive blockchain to make 2024 an even better year than 2023.
Connect With Me On Web3
Feel free to connect with me on the following Web3 publishing platforms.
First published by Author Allen Taylor at Paragraph. Image created with Canva.