In October 2016 I joined a strange blogging platform called Steem (which, from now on, to avoid confusion, I will call it by its real name: Hive). It was a serendipitous encounter: I didn't know about this thing, but a guy wanted to interview me, as a blogger. 14 years ago I launched (and I'm still writing on) a successful personal development blog (at its peak, it made it in top 100 world self-improvement blogs for 3 years in a row). During the last 3-4 years (about at the same time I started to be active on other platforms too, Hive, included) it kinda dwindled, but it's still a thing for me. I still write on it, but more in the sense of a journal, not necessarily as a bigger, business related outlet.
But let's get back to how I started here: the interviewer sent me 20 questions, I sent him the answers, then I got the link to the final interview.
Wow! Imagine my surprise when I saw next to the article some amount of money. Like there was already some sort of reward? For what? From whom? How does this work? What sorcery is this?
I started to learn and educate myself and in a matter of days I published my first post. From there, a strange, unusual and, most of the time, very fulfilling journey unfolded. What follows is a short list of the things I learned so far here.
1. It Doesn't Matter What You Think About Your Post, Or How Much You Worked On It, If Nobody Likes It
By far the most valuable lesson here is that it doesn't really matter what you think about your writing, nor the amount of time you spend on it, what matters is if somebody really likes it. And here is very easy to see it, because there's no middle man, no fishy advertising going on, no self-deluding promotion. These are real people, with real wallets, with real money, voting with their wallet. No need to complain you worked 3 hours on your post, and you only get pebbles. That's it. That's how it works. Not how advertising taught you it works. Here you deal with real people, telling you with their votes if they liked or not your post, or if they think it will take off, hence expecting some curation rewards.
2. Writing And Politics Are Two Different Things, Pick Your Battles
Shortly after joining as a writer, I also decided to become a witness (which is something that I'm still doing, 3 and a half years later). I do have the technical knowledge (as a matter of fact, these days I'm paying rent by being a mobile app developer) and I also know how to manage bare metal machines (my own, or rented). But after I became a witness I realized this is more a game of influence, and it has little to do with my writing or technical expertise. There's nothing wrong with that, it is what it is, only I learned to focus, at times, on the things that I know I can do best. I'm not very good at politics, hence I never made it to top 21, but I am still able to support the network, and I'm doing this from a space of pure contribution, even if I'm subsidizing my node for more than 1 and half years now. I'm more involved in writing, that's something that I've been doing it consistently for about two decades now.
3. Consistency Is Key
This is not something necessarily learned here, but it was greatly enforced by this space. Hive is still a very stripped down platform. It lacks a lot of the features you find in corporate apps, like Facebook or Twitter, features developed with a lot of money and testing, and which are making your life very easy there. So here you're pretty much left only with your own efforts, if you want to stay afloat of the game. You really have to be consistent, to work on your presence (or on the projects you started in the community) because there's no one else doing it for you. I find this to be a good thing. I believe discipline is fundamental in many areas, so I value any activity that helps me become more disciplined.
4. Humans Are Humans, Hence Flawed
That's another interesting lesson, similar to number one. Like a cold shower, that is. Other centralized platforms have very powerful filters and options to block / hide / cancel other messages or presences. They do this because they want you to feel comfortable and spend as much time as possible there. That's their commodity, your time. In Hive, well, you don't have these filters, and you get to experience people quite... raw. I had my fair share of heated arguments and unfiltered angry actions, but, at the end of the day, you realize this just real world. Nu cushions, no pretense. If you want to stay afloat, accept this and deal with it. Try to maintain a level of decency and understand this is how humans behave and, most important, that you own your time here, nobody else. So make the best out of it. If that means avoiding arguments or other people entirely, work on it. And remember you may appear flawed too, to someone else.
5. Cryptos Are Fascinating
Before Hive I dabbled very briefly in crypto, my interest being more technical than speculatory. I knew about Bitcoin since you could still mine it on your computer. But it was Hive that introduced me into the bigger world of this and I learned tremendously. Not only from a technical point of view, by writing a PHP layer on top of its API, but also from an economic point of view, learning how tokens behave, understanding decentralized exchanges, pumps and dumps, inflationary and deflationary tokens, and so on. I am grateful to Hive for this encounter. I was involved in a few crypto projects, at various levels (most of them as technical) and I enjoyed this tremendously.
6. You Own Your Space
A decentralized platform means there's no single owner. For a while, Hive was a centralized platform posing into a decentralized one. The fork that happened when the company that wrote the initial blockchain code got sold (I won't even mention the details, that's how irrelevant they are now for me) made it really decentralized. And now I realized that there's no one else to blame for anything. This is a collective contribution, a live ecosystem of people contributing resources. Hence, you own whatever you contribute to. Now you may understand better number 2, where I said I decided to still be a witness, even if I have to subsidize.
7. It Feels Good When You're Paid
This is an experience every writer should have. You really get money for your writing from real people. Don't try to explain me how the money are allocated from the daily reward pool by votes, I know all this shit way too well. It's still people giving you money directly, no advertisers, no upfront payout for pre-ordered articles, nothing. It's just other people enjoying (or not enjoying) your work.
I'm a geek, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Hive you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
Wanna know when you're getting paid?
| I know the feeling. That's why I created hive.supply, an easy to use and accurate tool for calculating your HIVE rewards | |