I recently spent my time on youtube not as a consumer but tries to analyze it and compare it to hive. I am going to just go straight to the point so that we all can learn from my findings. In this post, I view hive and youtube as a place to share content and a social media platform. Both similarities are, they are a content sharing place and a social media. However, some differences lie in reward mechanisms and starting out on both platforms. That’s what I want to focus on. So hopefully, we all can learn something.

Do we have it easier as a Hive content creator?

Whether you want to start on youtube, on hive, starting a blog, it takes time starting out. However, there's a unique mechanism that works on Hive that makes it different from Web2. Not just censorship resistant but let’s be honest, the reward works differently too. This is where I think we all forget, perhaps unaware of and interestingly, this impacts how we view things around here. In comparison to youtube, if you want to start earning from youtube partner program, there are some requirements such as :

Follow all the YouTube channel monetization policies.
Live in a country/region where the YouTube Partner Program is available.
Have no active Community Guidelines strikes on your channel.
Have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months.
Have more than 1,000 subscribers.
Have a linked AdSense account. YouTube Partner Program overview & eligibility

Meanwhile on hive, you can start out from anywhere and its location agnostic/ doesn’t care where you are from. On hive, as soon as you make an introduction there are various initiatives that welcome you such as @lovesniper and the likes have already turned in a payout once it reaches 7 days time.

Now, imagine if you’re starting out on youtube, you also need to fill out other requirements with 4k “valid” public watch hours and you need to have more than 1000 subscribers before you can even make anything.

Some people here even after a few years can’t even have 1000 subscribers/followers. Again, You don’t even need to have 4000 valid public watch hours and even no comment posts sometimes get rewarded too which is wild to think of now.

Starting Out on Youtube VS Hive

Most starting out on youtube have a capital to start. They are not just time rich but have a proper camera, laptop, or microphone and things necessary to support their journey. Some of them started out and have teams behind them that take care of things.Remember, it doesn’t limit individuals to start but these days since the competition on it is pretty high, most people who want to start out, they already have established gears.

What if you don’t? Can you still create content on youtube? Yeah sure. But here’s the difference, once they make it into the youtube required program partnership, their quality will improve and they will introduce newer things.

Ever notice your favorite youtube creators do that? A most well-known example would be pewdiepie. But even personally, the content creators that I follow there, have significantly improved their content once they reached a certain subscriber and started making actual money from it.

Can anyone be the next pewdiepie? I don’t think so because again he is pewdiepie. But he has the advantage of being early and his content sets the trend, but many can be as successful as pewdiepie with even more money than him. We see contents like his and making money too.

What about on Hive?

It’s not once or twice I heard people make content from their phone. Many of us here use phones and it's a convenient way to consume but what about content creation? I personally don’t find it comfortable writing content on the phone. On this aspect, with a simple low entry phone, you can start on hive either just write content, make videos, or play games. Starting out, you can even earn something if it’s a cent, it’s still something, right?

Just like on youtube, you can not expect to make it right away but the chances of you making it right away with your awesome content, it’s higher on hive. There are curators out there whether individual or in a curation group that scours content everyday 24/7 trying to find content to highlight. They all have sets of rules and things to follow. If you are an individual here with a stake, you definitely upvote content you like, right? I mean I don’t wanna go deep into APR and maximize your curation but let’s stay on the surface and assume you like it for the content.

Are you someone new, nobody(not celebs, influential people) expecting people to upvote your content without ever engaging, ever?

For nobody like me and many of us, we definitely need to hustle just to be seen.

On youtube, I notice low subscribers youtubers do engage with the people that commented on their page/content. They also visited another, collaborated with another youtuber, interacted with their followers in some sort of way; discord channels, instagram, twitch, live chat, you name it. Meanwhile here, I sometimes find people don’t engage at all. As much as introverted I am, I tried to at least talk to a few in a day before doing my stuff.

If you view this place just as a place to dump your content, unless someone really likes it and you’re a celeb or an outlier, then I don’t know. You’re probably just like the rest of people on youtube that do it for fun and their chances of getting rewarded is pretty low as well, back to "youtube requirements". So, you can’t expect to make something without effort and engagement.

Youtube VS Hive Trending Mechanism

Don’t you think youtube has a mechanism itself to what gets into trending? Don’t you think they moderate it? They do actually and they have some set of rules. Interestingly, they mention that even videos with higher count may not be on trending and the one with fewer views could do that. They have even more rules than what we have here. So, consider yourself lucky if you’re starting out here.

Have you ever come across people that get upvoted often and you think it’s unfair? You know, if you view them as just human, maybe they just happen to like that kind of content at that moment. Maybe next time, they would like yours.

Just like youtube, your likes mean something. On hive, you directly see that it’s money and is that why you’re afraid of giving people likes? why can't we upvote content that we genuine like? are you afraid of losing "your" money?

You’re actually getting something in return for your likes(upvote) unlike in youtube where you don’t get anything for that. Meanwhile on youtube, just cause you don’t see it’s money right away, you just hit likes? Did you notice your favorite youtube creators always say “ hit likes and subscribe button”? There’s correlation there. They don’t essentially make money from the like but it’s a form of engagement that somehow affects their earning too and likelihood of getting discovered by people.

Youtube dislike vs Hive downvote

The most dreadful of all!

Dislike and downvoting affect people emotionally. I mean, It sucks when someone dislikes us, right? We want to be liked. But we can't help it when someone dislikes us. When you see it, actually dislike and downvote are not that different. Maybe they just don’t like our content?

Do you think people who lose subscribers and their view counts still make money on youtube? Nope, they don’t. It could be that they did something stupid, say something mean, or other things. They could even get censored just by saying something that doesn’t fit youtube content moderation. Remember youtube has fake engagement policy too.

On hive your content stays, even on peakd, hive.blog, etc says muted or gone. People still can view and reward them meanwhile on youtube, once it’s gone, nada. You don’t make more money from it anymore. Crazy, right?

Okay so now, I have covered

• Starting out on youtube vs hive
• Engagement on Hive as new content creator
• Youtube and hive trending mechanism
• Dislikes and downvote

Now, I want to cover content quality. I know, we all have subjective views of it even more on hive where we as individuals have something to contribute and even reward each other with our upvote.

Youtube vs Hive Quality

If you want to make hive as your home for your content and a place to share your passion, hobby, etc., don’t you want to improve your content?

Do you think these days people would want to be a youtuber if it’s not paid? I doubt so. I mean in the past people did that for “hobbies” but now it is actually quite rewarding. Even little kids want to be a youtuber and some of them are richer than many of us.

Hive is the same. It’s rewarding too and you can do this for hobby, your pick. But again, at this point I may bore you, but on youtube you have to really put out your best as a nobody, just to get discovered.

What does it mean by putting your best? Do you have to really write out long form content? No. But there are some things that are quite objective. Not to mention on hive, each communities have different rules. I believe even as simple as following the rules set, can increase your chance to be curated by others and even curators.

When I see great quality content on youtube from a small youtuber with less than <300 subscribers, I can’t help but wonder. What’s stopping us from creating those well-crafted videos and narratives?

On hive we have the opportunity to reinvest into making better content.

If you are in a food niche, maybe get better lighting, better plates, better tools to cook as you grow your subscribers and make more on hive. If you are a traveler, get a better camera, a better backpack, more creative ways to collaborate with locals to make documentaries, etc. For gamers, you can purchase better audio set up, etc. You don’t have to wait until you get certain views, subscribers, etc just to make something.

Hive is also subject to SEO. As a content creator, you have to be aware of it. I am not sure about other search engines but google thus far has some guides that point out some subjective questions to assess your content. If your content on Hive has great SEO that would definitely help the platform to get discovered too. So, consider that as a way for you to help out the community too. So, for example if you want to write a product review, google has a way to assess it in their product reviews guide. In fact, you can read out google advice on SEO related content and it’s all free.

Those are just a tiny fraction of my observations on youtube vs hive. I hope it provides some insight and this was an expanded version from my original twitter unorganized thoughts which was available on my personal twitter account. So, let me know if you find this helpful, not helpful, anything! Thanks!