Tokenized blogging has been good to us. For some of us, it's good enough to be a business. How can I make the transition?
Cover image made using Excel 2003 and Windows Character Map, with light edits using MS Paint.
Other images sourced as noted.
TL;DR -- General Outline
- Introduction
- So How Can I Go About Making This Transition?
- The Blogging Side
- Engagement, Engagement, Engagement
- Go Where the Hivers Are
- Drive Traffic to Where Hivers Are Not
- Content Marketing for Yourself and Your Fellow Hivers
- The Extra Income Side
- Extra Income Engagement
- Contests or Giveaways
- Delegations
- Other Forms of Extra Income
- Diesel Pools
- Peer-to-Peer Work
- Extra Income Engagement
- The Blogging Side
- Just My Two Sats
Introduction
No matter what we do on the blogging side of Hive-- whether as Leos using LeoFinance or as Hivers dedicated to whatever community we call home-- we make money:
- Commenting;
- Posting;
- Upvoting for curation;
- Staking HIVE for Hive Power;
- Delegating HP;
- Placing HBD in Savings.
This happens as long as we engage with others even minimally. Some of us make more than others even with this level of tokenized blogging, and that's OK: it depends on what we offer others and the value others perceive we offer them.
Many of the whales we find on Hive have also been around for several years, long before Hive had it's own ID4 moment:
Click for full-sized image
Image Source: Tom Butler
Whether they've been on-chain since the earliest days of Steemit, "Hive-D4" (2020-March-20), or even since Halloween 2021, some of these Hivers have taken their tokenized blogging to a higher leel and turned it into a business. Whether the business is a side hustle, a bona fide second income, or even the day job, they made it work to achieve that status. After over 1 year as a Hiver and almost 1 year as a Leo, I want to make the transition to tokenized blogging as a business.
So How Can I Go About Making This Transition?
| 👉 Remember-- |
|---|
| --I haven't made the transition yet. So this is not a "how-to" post. Instead, it's more of a blueprint I should follow and adjust as needed. |
The best thing I can do is to see how others ahead of me have made this transition. Part of it involves actual blogging. Part of it involves taking advantage of opportunities to earn extra income.
The Blogging Side
Tokenized blogging is primarily, well, blogging. What changes is how I blog. While still being true to myself, blog about topics which
- would be of interest to more people than topics I've chosen in the past;
- have a higher profile (not necessarily trending);
- are in service of fellow tokenized bloggers;
- make people feel good about having taken time to read my content;
Even if I've been doing all those things, was I doing them smartly? Was I doing them more efficiently? Was I giving myself more bang for the HIVE or LEO?
No, no, and no.
So now I need to consider input, output, and production. Not that I'm going to need fancy charts or other tracking tools, but I will need to do more in less time.
So where do I need to make adjustments in order to make tokenized blogging work for me?
Engagement, Engagement, Engagement
Like many Leos, one of the first Leos I encountered was @taskmaster4450le. Even then he was telling us to engage with others as often as possible:
- Get an upvote? Engage.
- Get a comment? Engage.
- Make a comment? Engage.
Given how long he's been around, @taskmaster4450le/@taskmaster4450 has been urging this of his fellow bloggers for years across 2 blockchain communities. No one can argue with the success he's had.
Image Source: Tenor (via D.Buzz)
Go Where the Hivers Are
Engagement is a form of seed planting. Any form of engagement is good for us, even if we don't earn an upvote immediately. It's about putting ourselves out there for (more) people do discover us.
After a few times engaging-- in greater numbers-- with fellow Leos, they may get a favorable impression of us and decide to support us with an upvote. Even if the upvote is close to zero HIVE or zero LEO, it gets us closer to where we want to be.
Besides upvotes (or, using Big Tech terms, "likes"), engagement is also vital for other reasons:
- Reblogs -- If people found a post useful, it will be referenced to in their own personal blog spaces. Even if no one visits our blogs (yet or ever), chances are that people will visit the blogs of others. If they see our post in someone else's blog, there must be something to it.
- Followers -- They may have become followers on the strength of a reblog, or they may have liked how we engaged with them over a series of comments, or for any other reason. We can't get followers if we aren't where they are, so we put ourselves where they are. Promotional tools such as Ecency Points or Layer 2 tokens to be burned are good, but they do cost. So once again we need to be where fellow tokenized bloggers are to give ourselves greater exposure.
- Following -- Same as with Followers, only we seek them. This is one area where I need to improve my game, for sure.
The effect of these forms of engagement on our growth as tokenized bloggers is delayed gratification. It may take a while, but it wil happen. If we continue our engagement efforts, then each additional reblog or follower takes less time to acquire.
Drive Traffic to Where Hivers Are Not
Unless a 4-member community I'm in counts a whale among its members, I should post where more people can see my content. This is especially true if I want to promote a new community.
Periodically new communities come into existence. Some of these have an easier time acquiring new members, others don't; that's just how it is.
So once again I go to where the Hivers are and make a post promoting a new community, tribe, token, service, project, or anything else I believe deserves to be promoted. If necessary, I promote often enough until the traffic flows as intended.
Greater traffic for newer communities means greater traffic for Hive. That means Hive is growing and doing better than before. That helps LeoFinance and the other tribes which have their own tokens. Over the long term, we all succeed. This includes the business owners who are tokenized bloggers.
Content Marketing for Yourself and Your Fellow Hivers
"Content Marketing" is just a fancy term for problem solving:
- How many ways can I use potatoes?
- What are the uses for green tea?
- Which of 5 brands is best for handling such-and-such a task?
- 8 Ways To Write Nested IF() Functions
One thing about content marketing: it's OK to give credit to the competition. It's even OK to admit that the competitor's solution is better than your own! Having said that, content marketing shows that you're so confident in your own goods or services that you stack them up against the competition and offer people to see for themselves how well they do against each other with the expectation that they will choose your solution.
Even if they go with a competitor's solution this time, there are other opportunities for your solution to be chosen. Whether your solution is chosen or not isn't the point. The point is that you show yourself to be objective in the alternatives you offer and demonstrate integrity in the content marketing you produce. Over time, you prove yourself to be trustworthy, and that adds value to your content. At that point, your content will receive have truly earned the upvotes it had received.
Content marketing is something we do for ourselves as well as for fellow Hivers. It can serve as a way to promote each other.
The Extra Income Side
Whether it's for ourselves or for others, we can use extra income. Some ways of earning extra income involve engagement. Other ways of earning extra income involve investment (actually, re-investment).
Extra Income from Engagement
Contests or Giveaways
This is exactly what it sounds like, so not much will be explained here. Many, many communities and tribes offer them periodically. Some last for a day, others for a week or two, and ocasionally there will be a month-long contest.
Occasionally, there may be a contest or giveaway you won't know about until you receive a notification of a transfer made to your account. That's like found money!
If you participate in something like the Hive Engagement League or the LeoFinance Engagement League, there are awards for the top X commenters as well as Lucky Number winners scattered throught the Top 100 rankings.
For whatever contest or giveaway in which you want to participate, just be sure to follow the rules of the contest or giveaway as specified.
Given the nature of contests or giveaways, do not rely on them as a source of income, but gladly accept the winnings so that they bring you closer to your financial goals as a tokenized blogger.
Delegations
When will you be in a position to make delegations? Only you can answer that question to your satisfaction. I had my priorities, and you will have yours.
There are 3 kinds of delegations we could make once we're in a position to delegate HP or token power:
- Delegations for Rewards -- There are so many accounts to which we delegate HP in return for HIVE or other tokens that even old-timers discover them periodically. These would be accounts to which tokenized bloggers can delegate HP.
- Delegations to support accounts which supported us -- These would be accounts set up specifically for the purpose of assisting new Hivers as they get started. Examples include @giftgiver, @dustbunny, and @dustsweeper.
- Delegations to pay it forward -- These would be delegations we give to promising new Hivers as they try to establish themselves while evading RC Jail. It takes lots of HP to reach this level of delegation, but it's rewarding as an investment in the future of Hive.
For a new Hiver, my suggestion is to hold off on delegation until reaching at least 250 HP. Although Resource Credits aren't as much of a concern for someone with 250 HP as for someone with 2.500 HP, it's still possible to suffer from RC Blowout and once again end up in RC Jail. It's not easy, but not even 250 HP is safe from RC Blowout. I know from personal experience.
Other Forms of Extra Income
Diesel Pools
For a tokenized blogger, diesel pools are a powerful income generator even at a small scale. This is why I would go with diesel pools first and delegations later.
| 👉 Things To Know about Diesel Pools |
|---|
✔️ Diesel pools (also known as liquidity pools) exist to facilitate the trading of one token for another without needing to use an exchange. |
| ✔️ Diesel pools can be found at Tribaldex. |
| ✔️ Anyone contributing to a diesel pool is a liquidity provider. |
| ✔️ Liquidity providers make contributions in a 50/50 split: for every 1 HIVE-worth of Token A, 1 HIVE-worth of Token B is needed. |
| ✔️ If someone wants to swap one token for another and both tokens are in a liquidity pool, then it's possible to both make a token swap and save on exchange fees. Otherwise, a trip to the DEX is needed. |
| ✔️ LP Rewards are distributed virtually daily; they are subject to availablility. |
| ✔️ Even the LP Rewards themselves are variable. What matters is that the liquidity provider is rewarded in proportion to the liquidity added. |
As an example, with just 20 SWAP.HIVE it's possible to add liquidity to the SWAP.HIVE:PIZZA diesel pool. 10 SWAP.HIVE goes to the SWAP.HIVE part of this diesel pool. The other 10 SWAP.HIVE is used to buy PIZZA, and that amount of PIZZA is added to the diesel pool.
(Where can you find 20 SWAP.HIVE to spend for a diesel pool? If you hand't done so already, check your Hive Engine wallet for Layer 2 tokens. You'd be surprised to see what's in there!)
As a tokenized blogger, what matters is adding to the diesel pool periodically. Start with the initial contribution. After Month 1, sell the rewards and use that for the Month 2 contribution to the diesel pool. Repeat each month. Over time, each contribution should be greater than what came the month before because your position as a liquidity provider had grown larger over time.
After a while, you may want to take the LP Rewards to divert them for HP or HBD in Savings. Since you still maintain your positions as a liquidity provider, you simply start over with your LP Rewards.
Think of diesel pools as a simple form of DeFi. As easy as Cub Finance tries to make DeFi for newcomers to the space, diesel pools are easier to work with both as a liquidity provider and as a tokenized blogger.
(What if you don't have any income to spare in your digital wallet? Just make a deposit using Tribaldex or whatever other method you prefer. How you do that is up to you, but it's OK to bring in outside money to provide seed for the principal contribution to the diesel pool you choose.)
Peer-to-Peer Work
Without doing tokenized blogging as a business, I contributed to a few Guides for the Crypto Guides project spearheaded by @forexbrokr. I picked a topic or two for a guide, wrote a post, then @forexbrokr added to content to the final guide. A number of us did this for the Guides covered by the project, and @forexbrokr paid us in LEO as promised.
If you have an in-demand skill to supplement tokenized blogging, it can come in handy. One such skill is graphic design.
Seeing another need for the Crypto Guides Project, @forexbrokr needed someone with graphic design skills to design (at the time) 19 thumbnail graphics, one for each Guide.
@finguru to the rescue! He produced the thumbnails as requested by @forexbrokr, and @finguru was paid 285 LEO for his effort.
Who knows how often peer-to-peer work takes place on Hive? It's more common than we realize. Tokenized blogging in and of itself may not be used for peer-to-peer work-- I can't say either way yet-- but it can lead to opportunities I hadn't considered otherwise.
Just My Two Sats
Although I've had some earnings doing tokenized blogging, I want to make the transition to tokenized blogging as a business. The skills would be the same, but a change in focus is needed.
Engagement remains vital, but it needs to be applied strategically. Go where the people are. It could be a post with hundreds of comments. It could be a high-traffic community. It could be a post with known high-profile regulars. It could even be 100 posts across a community. Engagement is a numbers game, and if the numbers are large, then eventually they will work in my favor when it's time to earn upvotes today or next week or next month.
Additionally, there will be places where traffic is needed for whatever reason, especially if a community or tribe is new. Once again, I go where the people are, only I promote the community or tribe needing greater traffic. When this community succeeds, Hive succeeds; and when Hive succeeds, we succeed. It's win-Win-WIN all around.
Content Marketing is just a fancy term for problem solving, and it allows us to present alternatives or options to a given problem. We offer alternatives or options with the expectation that even after tryin them all our preferred choice gets selected; that's much much confidence and faith we have in our own offerings. Even if our own offerings leave much to be desired, people see that we are fair and objective as we present alternatives and options. This allows us to grow our reputations as no-nonsense and fair providers of content.
While blogging is the main activity for a tokenized blogger, just as important is income generation. Contests or giveaways can help, but we can't rely on them. Delegations allow us to earn an APR on Hive Power, but it's not recommended for new Hivers initially. An alternative which new Hivers can use is diesel pools in which they can be liquidity providers. This simple form of DeFi allows a tokenized blogger to reinvest LP Rewards into the diesel pool for greater rewards each period. After a while, LP Rewards can be used for other priorities such as placing HBD in Savings.
Another way for a tokenized blogger to earn income is through peer-to-peer work. It's more common on Hive than we realize, so opportunities exist to take advantage of peer-to-peer work.
| Links in image | URLs |
|---|---|
| Daily Crypto Markets Live Blog | https://leofinance.io/@leomarkettalk |
| LeoFinance | https://leofinance.io |
| TheTerminal | /created/hive-101265 |
| Hive Projects | https://hiveprojects.io |
| Dust Sweeper | @dustsweeper |
| Dust Bunny | @dustbunny |
| Links in image | URLs |
|---|---|
| "...to make up for..." | https://leofinance.io/hive-167922/@magnacarta/who-is-magnacarta-and-why-is-he-sending-me-pizza |
| LeoFinance | https://leofinance.io/@magnacarta |
| Proof of Brain | https://proofofbrain.blog/@magnacarta |
| ♦ D.Buzz-only ♦ D.Buzz: ♦ at-magnacarta.buzz | https://blog.d.buzz/#/@magnacarta.buzz |
| Festivus | https://festivusweb.com/index.php |