I had a wonderful five days in Ohio visiting family. I got some quality time with my Mom, brother's family, nephews, and three great-nieces that I’d never even met. My nephew is a United States Marine stationed on the West coast and, because of this, I haven’t seen him since 2011. It’s a bit strange (in a wonderful way) how we all just seem to click when we get together. Our family time together flows so easily and it feels like no time has passed, even though we’ve lived apart for almost thirty years now. I also forgot how exhausting (and how much fun) spending time with children under twelve can be.
Here’s a short video with some photos of our trip.
Honestly, before I left for Ohio I found myself in a bit of a funk. This year I’ve experienced progressively diminishing engagement. I was beginning to feel like I was becoming irrelevant on the platform that has become such a huge part of my life for almost a decade.
As time away from here typically does—I’ve come back refreshed, with a recalibrated perspective, and the realization that I missed blogging and interacting with friends I’ve made here. Every now and then I have to be reminded that I primarily write for myself, not just solely for those who read my blogs. Everything in life changes, including Hive, and this is healthy for the platform.
I feel as though the moment a writer begins to try to tailor their writing to a specific audience or to just attract attention their work quickly becomes stale and can become inauthentic. I’ve had this ah-ha moment a few times in my nearly nine years blogging here on Steemit/Hive. I think a lot of us have. But it’s always important to approach life from a place of gratitude rather than negativity. I’ve discovered a funny thing, when I’m excited about my own writing my readership tends to be too.
Now that my perspective has been duly reframed, I decided it would be the perfect time to list the nine reasons everyone should be here on Hive doing this:
Nine Reasons Absolutely Everyone Should Be Blogging on Hive
1. Community-Driven Ecosystem
Hive has niche communities like poetry, crypto, gaming, wellness, etc. This gives your blog an automatic potential audience that’s actually engaged and enthusiastic about your content. This also gives you a chance to connect and form bonds with people from all over the world. I’ve found engaging with other bloggers on Hive has a way of broadening both our perspectives and our world-views in general. I feel like I have friends now on nearly every continent. How many people can say that?
2. Gamified and Highly Motivational
The voting and reputation systems built into the platform make the user-experience more engaging and can encourage consistent posting. A blogger’s “stake” in the platform grows with their activity. It’s ingenious, really, and I feel it’s still greatly underutilized.
In my nine years of blogging on Hive the platform has been the incubator, both content-wise and financially, for my last four published books. The truly wonderful thing about it is posting content here before publishing in book form finances the self-publishing process later on. Hive pushes the creative envelope by encouraging me to keep writing and coming up with new/fresh ideas.
3. Earn Cryptocurrency for Your Content
Hive rewards users with its native cryptocurrency (HIVE and HBD) for posting, commenting, and curating. This means you can earn actual income from your writing without having to rely on a plethora of ads, sponsors, or affiliate links. Creators on Hive earn real rewards instead of being used, controlled, and data-mined by Big Tech billionaires.
Also, as many of us have discovered, Hive is also an effective gateway to the world of cryptocurrency. This can set you on the path to personal and financial freedom. In those early years of 2016-2018 I was forced to learn how cryptocurrency actually works—the mechanics of crypto exchanges, wallets, and investing in other tokens. This education happens at your own pace and organically by actually doing. We also have what is probably the highest concentration of crypto-enthusiasts of any blogging platform in the world.
4. Censorship Resistance
Hive is decentralized, which makes it far less prone to censorship than platforms like Medium or Facebook. Since the blockchain is decentralized, once content is on the blockchain, it can’t be taken down by a central authority. Anyone shadow-banned on other platforms know how horrible it can feel to have your content taken down for opinions that might not jive with the powers-that-be. Hive isn’t without its problems and drama but this will happen anywhere there are humans.
5. No Platform Fees or Paywalls
Let’s be real, paywalls suck. Unlike Medium or Substack, Hive doesn’t charge you or your readers. It’s free to use and doesn’t hide your most engaging content behind a paywall. You get rewarded without limiting access to your writing to paid subscribers. Over the course of my three decades of writing I’ve participated in just about every blogging platform on planet Earth and Hive is vastly superior to all of them.
6. Early-Mover Advantage in Web3
I think giving you early-mover advantage is a major benefit that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough. As most of us know, Hive is part of the Web3 movement. Blogging on Hive puts you ahead of the curve and gets you comfortable with decentralized platforms, tools, wallets, and crypto literacy. These skills matter now and will likely become even more valuable in the future.
7. Cross-Platform Ecosystem
There’s an entire ecosystem built on top of the Hive blockchain. Content posted on the Hive blockchain can be viewed on various front-ends platforms like PeakD, Ecency, 3Speak, LeoFinance, etc. Each of these front-ends are tailored to different audiences, but all are tied to the same account and blockchain content.
8. Transparent Metrics/Proof of Activity
Blockchain technology makes your publishing history, rewards, and follower growth verifiable and public. This transparency could be used as an example for all the ways in which blockchain technology could be utilized in many other ways to make our lives better. Think voting, government, banking. This transparency can also add credibility when applying for writing gigs, grants, or partnerships.
9. It’s Fun!
Even after almost a decade of daily blogging, keeping up and engaging with friends I’ve met here has become one of the things I look forward to when I wake up in the morning. I feel like I’m part of a cohesive global community, this is something truly rare and special. How many platforms can say that?
All for now. Thanks for reading.
