Hive is the most interesting and powerful tool to take control of your financial future I have seen since the advent of Bitcoin. Learning how to use it can sometimes feel like a masterclass in Web3 but, once you have some very basic skills under your belt, the ability to earn money writing about the topics that you are passionate about is a life-changing opportunity. I've spent months experimenting with Hive and the robust set of tools that are coming to be knows as the Hive Ecosystem and am here to share what I've learned with you.
First, you're going to what to start to wrap you mind around what you're getting involved with here. Hive describes itself as:
"Hive is a DPoS powered blockchain & cryptocurrency. Fast. Scalable. Powerful. Hive has a thriving ecosystem of dapps, communities & individuals."
For the moment, it can be useful to think of Hive as a novel application of cryptocurrency that is currently revolutionizing social media, content creation, and NFT gaming. This is of course an oversimplification of a more complex project but, for an elevator pitch, it'll get the job done. You'll be using this tool to make and monetize social media / blog posts.
First, you'll need an account. Thankfully, Hive accounts are free in most cases.
You can get an account started by clicking: HERE
If you have a phone and email address there you aren't going to have any problems here or have to pay anything. The payment for accounts is mostly to keep people from spamming account creation through those creation providers. However, if you are new to cryptocurrency, you ARE going to want to pay special attention to this:
Due to the way that blockchain empowered tech works there is no way to undo or reset accounts in the way that most have become used to using legacy account technology. In this case, your 'account' and 'wallet' are the same and your password is the keys to the kingdom. If you lose them, you are going to have a very bad time and lose EVERYTHING you've built. This is 'other side of the coin' of the ways that Blockchain treats you as an adult and gives you new empowering tools. It also gives you responsibility to take care of and use these tools well. Store your keys safely and carefully.
Now that you have a Hive account you essentially already have everything you need to interface with a variety of really interesting and rapidly developing projects!
For example:
Splinterlands - A digital trading card game built on blockchain technology.
Rising Star - Go from poor busker to music super star with this crypto currency trading card game.
Lucksacks Poker - Host a custom poker league, tournament, ring game or sit-n-go.
PeakD - Decentralized social media with true ownership.
Actifit - An innovative dapp that rewards your everyday activity.
NFT Mart - An NFT market for Hive.
LeoFinance - A social platform where users get paid for creating, and interacting with crypto and finance content.
HiveBlocks - Block explorer and tool-kit for Hive.
And so much more!
"Pretty near ecosystem all and all but ...why?"
That's what I thought when I was first getting to know Hive. In appreciation for you trusting me and reading this far I'm going to answer your question in a single screenshot from PeakD.
You know what's better than 'Up Votes'? Money.
Sometimes a game-changer shows up and, just like that, the modality that came before it seems downright insulting in retrospect. When I first started to understand that NFT technology was giving me back control of my gaming collection pieces playing games where I didn't own my collection in any way (like Magic the Gathering Arena or Hearthstone) suddenly became unplayable. PeakD has done this same thing to social media content creation in my life. If I'm not profiting from it directly while still acting 100% like myself I'm just not interested anymore.
For years now the only social media I've been using is a Instagram account that is less about me and more about my massive sprawling VHS collection. This account quickly became a business because I'm crafty and, as a obsessive collection, it soon needed an eBay store to move the doubles and triples of great tapes I was finding. This because my obsessive project, then PeakD came along and blew it out of the water.
Before long all my VHS posts on Instagram started being replaced with posts mostly on the topic of Play2Earn gaming on PeakD. I had recently made an investment in Splinterlands and, when the game blew up a few months later, it became my favorite hobby. As someone who watches their DEC capture rare obsessively in-game I can only play for about an hour a day so that made writing about this amazing new experience the a fun new hobby. What I didn't expect was the earnings that started coming in.
It was slow at first. Just like other social media platforms people aren't so interested in the thoughts of a brand new stranger often in a community they had just created. That said, everything I wrote on PeakD seemed to get some eyes on it. Better yet, there didn't seem to the be the intense constant hostility that is present on Reddit these days. SCORE! All this together makes PeakD a perfect place to find tour feed as a writer while often being cheered on by other folks in similar positions. There is not yet the land-fill of content that buries all new content that's present in legacy social media platforms like facebook and reddit.
So I took my single Hive rewards and kept writing. As months pass I could tell my articles were getting a lot more focus and quality and not just from the response I was getting from readers. When you do anything day after day for months you'll find skill and your own voice and, humbly, I'd like to believe that's whats been happening in my case.
Sometimes I'd get tipped with unique currencies that seemed connected to their own communities and, when I checked my wallet on Hive-Engine each day, I'd see these little rewards trickling in!
These small rewards are one of the ways you are going to start learning about new projects! Neat, huh? If you want even MORE rewards you can take these small amount of tokens and stake them in your wallet. This will remove your ability to spend them BUT will cause them to generate more small rewards to come trickling in. Am I hooked? Well...
So, at this point I've showed you how to create an account and write about whatever you want for profit on PeakD. Pretty cool right? I was sold at this point too but you know what really blew my mind? Splintertalk.
I stumbled across Splintertalk because I had been writing about Splinterlands anyway. After a few months worth of articles I started to notice I was getting a large amount of a token called Splintertalk in my rewards and checked it out. Turns out when I was posting to PeakD the website was just showing what I was posting on the Hive Blockchain and other websites were using that same feed. Some of these websites, like LeoFinance and Splintertalk, work almost just like PeakD but with some focus on topic. When you get tipped through these communities, instead of getting Hive, you get their tokens. Cool!
But then came the avalanche.
See that top article? It's a really well written article about how the coming Land Update is going to change the entire Splinterlands ecosystem. I'm proud of it. I'm going to get a payout of about 12,350 SPT for that post, thats $200+ USD. I'll also be getting paid HIVE and HBD rewards. It will also likely pull in random tips over the coming months.
For many of us $250 is a massive amount of money and the ability to earn it after just a few months of writing about a game I love seems almost too good to be true. But it's not. This is the beginning of a change thats going to take the internet, social media, and gaming by storm. This isn't a miracle, this is just Hive, working as intended.
When I got those tips I thought it was my responsibility to write this article so maybe someone else can start walking this path and enjoying the benefits it provides. This isn't some get rich quick scheme, this is just a story about a guy writing about his favorite video game and being able to buy his families groceries from the payments. To me, that's even cooler than a miracle. Thank's for reading yall!
Are you looking to hang out with other Crypto-Gamers? Join us over at the The Crypto-Gaming Guild discord. We are looking for game captains and folks who can help organize. If you are interested, please step up!
The games we are currently focusing on are:
Rising Star
Splinterlands
RollerCoin
UpLand
Neon District
Alien Worlds
Lost Relics
eXode