Should You Diversify Your Content Creation To Platforms Other Than Hive?
There has been some debate as to whether blogging or content creation in general can be a successful use case of the Hive blockchain and whether or not the content reward pool (author+curation) rewards should be scrapped. We know that we only have a few thousand daily active content creators on Hive. Some people including one consensus witness has pondered aloud whether the content reward pool should go.
While I don't think the content reward pool will be done away with any time soon, such thoughts should give one a pause, however. I have an old YouTube channel that I have published a handful of videos on in the last ten years or so. It has never occurred to me to try and monetize that channel. I've had blogs before before Steem but it didn't occur to me to take any steps toward monetizing them, either.
I've published my photos in three Facebook groups I'm in. One is for photography hobbyists and the two others are open groups for the residents of the city I currently live in and the one I come from. Both have tens of thousands of members. One series was liked by over a thousand people. One person asked for my permission to print some of the photos on condolence cards. In another case, an entrepreneur in the tourism industry offered to pay me for taking photos for his business.
If the base layer reward content pool went away and if there were no highly liquid SMT reward pool with the tokens widely traded on major cryptocurrency exchanges, I don't think I would be publishing much on Hive any longer. I might drop by a couple of times a week to see if there are any Hive-related news of interest. Otherwise, I'd go and publish my content on other platforms. I'd go to discord if I wanted to talk to people I know from Hive.
I think I'd set up a photo blog of my own, become more active on mainstream Web 2.0 platforms to garner attention to my blog and create a revenue stream sufficient to pay for the cost of my photography hobby. I haven't used my Steem or Hive income towards that purpose at all. Some new lenses would be nice.
So far, I haven't done any of those things. But given that the removal of the pool is on the table and one out of twenty of our consensus witnesses is publicly trying to win support for the idea, I've begun to think that becoming active on YouTube might not be a bad idea. If content creation gets demonetized on Hive, there would always be Web 2.0 to fall back on. YouTube has tons of content that I find really interesting. Hive does not have as much interesting content as the largest Web 2.0 platforms, yet. But I put up with that because it's possible to build ownership of a platform Web 3.0 by publishing content on Hive. And I remember what it was like in early 2018. I found a few individuals to discuss history with, for example. As a result of the bear market killing the fiat values of everyone's rewards, hardly any such individuals are left on this platform. The same applies to many other topics, leaving only Hive itself as a subject matter being of interest to a critical mass of people. Take away the content rewards and there is little reason to post anything on chain. The same community is on Twitter.
If Hive had a massive number of users, it would be worth my while to post even without getting rewarded. I'd get the exposure and the engagement here, too, no matter what I wanted to talk about. This platform is still very much a work in progress, however, and the user base is small.
I have recently published two posts on publish0x just to try it out. I think it’s fine. If I see a post on one of the platforms that rewards writers and I upvote it and then I see the same post on one of the others I get slightly annoyed. I like the idea of writing something that is exclusive to one platform. But maybe that’s just me?
There may be some people who agree with you. But it's fairly common among content creators in the wider web to cross-post their content to several platforms.
I don't think there's any harm in at all, it's just that managing several platforms can be a bit of a chore!
True. Some people use YouTube as a content delivery mechanism. They make YouTube videos and post them to Hive.
@adetorrent said he's close to monetizing his YouTube channel, which would be a secondary income stream in addition to his Hive rewards.
An added benefit is the analytics you get.
He's doing well if he can monetize his stuff. Although he'll be earning pennies I think at the lower end!
I fell below the threshold they introduced a few years back, before that I was earning pennies!
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I think he mentioned being close to the threshold a while ago.
Not really because I can't be arsed. But I think scrapping the reward pool is a really bad idea.
I think scrapping the pool would be courting with a chain split.
Yeah, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!
But that is only one witness isn't it?
Wolfie is the only one who's been advocating it in public. A non-witness but an old-timer nonetheless made a post in favor of it recently. He got some support from middle-tier users.
Content reward is the main idea. It can't be canceled, it's a rumor!
Of Course, I think there should be a reward. And also I believe that content should be unique and of high quality. If the content is only posted on the "Hive", search queries will always lead here. It is clear that this is a long process. Our task is to compete with such giants as Google and Facebook!
I don't like it when people post here links to Instagram, etc. ... People should share interesting content with friends on Hive, and not try to earn a Hive penny.
Good points.
The more places you share your posts, the more eyeballs you can draw to Hive. This is one of the reasons why I clip my livestreams into highlight reels and share them on Youtube and LBRY. It leverages those networks to draw potential viewers to the live content.