I Remember The First Post I wrote On Hive.
It feels a little ridiculous to say it BUT I was feeling more than a little self conscious when I clicked the post button hesitantly , wondering if anyone would even care what I had to say.
But really the journey started before that, I just hadn't realised it yet.
Let's take it back to the real beginning.
I was surfing pretty aimlessly on YouTube, trying to learn about cryptocurrency, but I was also really interested in blogging and had been for many years. So knowing (as we all do nowadays) how those pesky algorithms, you can imagine how the suggested videos would cross reference 2 of my regular searches to conjure up a suggestion:
A platform that pays you for blogging with cryptocurrency.
I was instantly intrigued but with trademark 'me style' procrastination, I started searching for reviews of this nirvana that was trying to draw me in to it's 'too good to be true' Utopian embrace. What I haven't mentioned about me is that unfortunately, I have always suffered from a severe, almost terminal case of 'analysis paralysis'.
I'm sure you realise just exactly what this is, but just in case anybody perusing this post has not encountered this phenomena, it is defined as becoming stuck in data gathering about every single minute facet of a topic and never, I mean ever taking the all important action step.
So to sum up, I spent literally weeks and weeks and weeks watching videos, listening to podcasts, interviews and reading traditional blog posts to try and learn anything and everything I could about this platform. Everything I learned made me incredibly eager to sign up and join just to see what the buzz was about.
But I didn't!
I registered on forums, looked up Hive on moneymaking websites, crypto groups, I asked questions designed to 'trip people up' so that I could find out the really dirty secrets and exactly how this SCAM worked, why did I use the word scam, great question Dear Reader, I can answer that easily
Everything I learned made it seem far too good to be true!
I had fallen for far too many BIG promises and pipe dreams across the years, that turned out to be just that, hyped up nonsense with no substance and a raft of small print and technicalities and the occasional loophole that eventually confirmed what I had believed all along, these things simply couldn't work for an ordinary guy like me.
I knew that somewhere down the line I was gonna have to invest thousands (or at the very least, hundreds) to qualify for the earnings and compensation matrix or whatever these charlatans were calling it.
Eventually sheer curiosity got the better of me so I decided to register an account. I promised myself that at the first hint of chicanery, or a request for my credit card, I would abort this foolish mission, safe in the knowledge that I was right all along.
I waited to be approved and accepted, back then there was a lengthy waiting process for approval and I waited somewhere in the region of 2 agonizing weeks. It's hard to believe that now the process in near enough instant if I want to 'onboard' a friend or work colleague to Hive. It certainly has come a long way.
I already had a half decent idea of how to navigate the site, from the dozens and dozens of tutorials I had watched on YouTube and the many screenshots I had committed to memory. I began to ravenously consume content, I read blog after blog to get an idea of what people were writing about, talking about, learning about what mattered to them.
Do you know what I really found?
I found PEOPLE from every corner of the planet, from every walk of life, professionals, housewives, teens, computer programmers and developers. I found traders, nurses, financial planners, fitness coaches, stamp collectors, artists, musicians actors and every other kind of person you could name.
I found people who wrote rigidly in one niche, never straying from that topic, I found people who blogged about the news, some people just talked about anything that had happened to them that day. Some people posted every few hours, some every few days, and others still, posted randomly from time to time.
I learned something quickly, the people who were here ONLY for the financial rewards often didn't last long, they were forever talking about how little their posts made in earnings, they were missing the 'big picture' massively.
Let's think about it in a way most people with even a little experience of social media will understand. Imagine you had 6 friends on Facebook or Twitter and you made a post, would you expect 100 comments from people asking about and discussing the topic you had posted about?
If you learned from this and the next day you clicked on the add friend button like a person possessed and never interacted with any of the people you had friended, didn't comment on their holiday snaps, their bad day or their great news they had shared, would you expect a glut of messages asking how you are when you post about how you've had a bad day.
No, No and No!!!
This makes perfect sense, right?
Is this any different from the real world, our daily lives? I don't think so. We meet people, we share a little conversation, either deeply or just in passing each day. Some of those people become acquaintances, some become friends and some become people we couldn't bear to not have in our lives, they simply become that important to us.
This is something we have known ALL of our lives, it's called:
Building relationships!
People often look at the real world and online world being separate things and I guess there is some truth to that, however, when dealing with and interacting with people, they're just people, right? The rules don't change.
If you are going to dive in to a community of diverse people, this must be wholeheartedly understood. Some people you will just 'click' with, some will say things that resonate deeply with or merely interest you and conversations will be struck up and the rest 'as they say' is history.
Some people will simply be 'not your cup of tea' this is fine too, we don't expect to get on with every single person in our hometown do we.
I guess what I am trying to convey here (not very succinctly) is that we are dealing with people and eventually conversations will begin, friendships will be struck and relationships will be formed. At the risk of sounding trite and more than a little cliché, this is the true reward of Hive.
However, this is often where the financial rewards are borne also. Think about it, if you build solid relationships and enjoy a back and forth dialogue on each others writing, or simply in conversation about each others day, this is where much of your readership will grow from.
If you produce longer form writing, discussing a concept or writing short stories, poetry or thoughts on a hobby it is likely others who share your interests will gravitate toward sthis and you will develop a 'following'.
I realised all of these things in my early days here and so I began to write, some of my early posts made 2 or 3 cents and at least a couple made zero BUT the friendships I was striking up were amazing. I had never been a massive fan of most traditional social media to be perfectly honest. I found them to be a little vapid and often shallow and I realsied that people were building a pseudo image of how they wanted their life to be perceived, needless to say, I am not a fan of that sort of thing.
After 2 weeks I realise I had never enjoyed social media as I had never seen it play out the ay it was meant to be and now I had experienced it....
I was hooked.
I have been known to write posts of a few thousand words, interestingly I have also been known to leave comments of a similar length on the posts that resonated with me deeply. Often these people are brand new here and have no capacity to reward me financially.
Often these comments are on their introduction post, especially if they are confused and trying to navigate the platform and I am able to help. I realised if I interacted with this as my general rule of thumb, as I would in the offline world all of the other rewards would come in time and as a by product of acting with integrity and authenticity and simply...
BEING ME!
Trust me I had no idea how I was gonna write a blogpost but I knew I really wanted to and so I started reading posts from those who shared their experience and I quickly realised every single question I could ever have in a hundred lifetimes had already been answered in a post or a guide here already.
Believe me when I tell you, I have never looked back!
I have learned what my style of writing is, the topics that get me animated and excited when I write about them. I even formed a community for myself others to write posts in, called the The Self Improvement Community This a topic that is very close to my heart and I not only get to share my tips, tricks and strategies for increased health, wealth and happiness but I also get to read the thoughts of others and connect and engage with those who share my passion.
Interestingly I have learned more than I could ever have hoped to learn about crypto from my interactions with friends here. I have made some incredibly close real friendships with some of the people I have met here. Last year I even got to meet up with some truly fabulous community members I have known previously only through my interactions on Hive at the UK Hive meetup in Halifax in the North of England, I can assure you that was a thrill.
I have earned quite a lot of crypto for interacting here and also earned a plethora of other tokens from some other clever ways of receiving far more than just the Hive token which everybody who joins the platform has access to.
There are a number of HUGE developments taking place in our ecosystem and I wholeheartedly believe we will make quantum leaps in the coming months and years.
I have entered many contests n my time here and won many, many prizes, things like this are just an unforeseen extra benefit of being a member of the Hive community. What I expected to get from Hive when I joined was such a narrow focus compared to what I actually received in a hundred different areas.
I always tell people who join the fabulous, empowering community, whatever you think you have joined is actually so, so much more than you could ever imagine. I never dreamed that I would try my hand at fiction, haiku, poetry and so many other things I would have deemed 'out of my comfort zone'.
At one time I had a curation show that I hosted each week, think of it as a cross between a podcast and a live radio show. I have also collaborated with other amazing community members on other shows that were a LOT of fun.
I think this is a wonderful space for anyone wanting to work on a project, collaborate with users here with complimentary skills to your own and I sincerely believe that peope will form full time careers and businesses based on what they do here.
I became a content creator! ME!
People seldom see themselves as content creators when they start off here but little by little as skills develop and styles of content evolve, one day you become exactly that.
Let me tell you something I would do differently if I had my time again.
I feel like my earliest posts were trying to hard. I used stock photography and tried to sound as professional and knowledgeable as I possibly could. One day though, it finally hit me...
Perhaps I should just be me! After all no one else could do that nearly as well as I could, right? I started sharing my true personality, myself, my face and photography in my posts and the fun went up by a factor of 10.
That is coincidentally when I began to make more and more real friends because people could see I was a real person. I have never been scared to poke fun at myself and have a good old laugh with people.
That took me around 2 years to start doing and since then, everything has changed for me.
If the financial aspect was taken away tomorrow, I would still come back to Hive again and again as it is addictive in the best possible way.
I have a multitude of things I want to achieve from Hive over the coming 2 years but I believe that is just the start. I believe laying a deep, strong foundation here is the key to setting yourself up for all manner of rewards in the coming years.
I am extremely excited to see where we can all go together after all, the best journey's are those shared with friends we meet along the way.
So I started this post by talking about my first EVER post here. I clicked the post button, and I began to get comments from people. Suddenly I realised, if you write from the heart and with authenticity and integrity, those whom this resonates with, somehow magically show up.
That first post earned the majestic total of 0.03 cents, little did I realise that day just how much more than that it was really worth as a reward for finally taking ACTION!
From time to time, life pulls me away from the community, which is right and proper. We should always be at hand for those who are nearest and dearest to us. Each time I know I will return. The thought of upping sticks, losing the buzz of sharing my thoughts on the world through my new love (writing) and not getting to catch up with my Hive friends is absolutely not an option.
I have made a home on the blockchain FOREVER. I sincerely love Hive! 💖
I genuinely hope that you and yours are well and about to embark on your greatest ever spell of the journey we call life. May health, wealth, happiness and all of the very best life has to offer be abundant for you and may 2021 prove to be a breakout year for you in all that you would wish for yourselves. Most of all I hope you are surrounded at all turns by love, joy, friendship and happiness.
Thank YOU for taking the time to read my post and if you're one of those amazing people who like to hit the comments section... Then I doubly thank YOU!
Either way I want you to know that you are appreciated!
Keep taking the time to connect with each-other both here and in the so-called real world and try and look after each-other, because as you already know...
