Okay, I'll admit it; my title was clickbait.
While the title itself was clickbait there is allot of truth hidden within that lie. To be clear I don't see the HIVE Network as a failure and the success of a TRIBE can be determined in many ways that aren't linked to a tokens price.
Readers: "Rentmoney, what the hell are you talking about"?
My Journey On Hive
I have been doing allot of contemplating about HIVE/TRIBES and my Blog in general. This caused me to type out a set of goals I have set for myself but have not reached yet. If you are interested in reading what those goals are Click Here.
The contemplating I was doing also struck the memory of my very first goal I set on HIVE/STEEM. That goal is the reasoning for my overzealous clickbait title.
Readers: "Rentmoney, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT"?
My Original Goal
My original goal on HIVE was to show that someone can come here and become successful. Now success can be determined many ways. My blog by all means gets plenty of interaction and I'm grateful for that. A comment is worth just as much or more than an upvote. So when it comes to engagement I feel as my blog has become a success.
On the other side of that coin success is also determined by ones wealth earned. Now my goal when originally set wasn't just to be successful on HIVE. The original Goal was to show its possible to become a financial success on HIVE without currency investment. Put another way, I wanted to see if it was possible to start with 0 HIVE and build it up to something meaningful through hard work via content creation.
I feel as I gave this my best shot but failed. To give some more clarity my join date is January / 2018 and my total HIVE earned is 4376 (I have sold 0 HIVE) so plenty of time has passed before this conclusion was made. I am by no means complaining about the rewards I earned. I'm simply typing out my observations after deciding its time to put my original goal to rest as the time has come in which I intend on swapping some of my other currencies for HIVE. Now that I have gave you some background information.....
The Truth Hidden In My Lie Of A Title
For anyone living in first world countries, if you are an average JOE/JANE and all you are doing is content creating, I feel as its next to impossible to be a financial success on HIVE without an intitial investment (even then its not gntd). The appeal to places like this is the sexiness of earning via socializing (AKA, Creating Content). The bulk of users that this place needs for mass adaption will likely not invest much fiat. Its likely that the majority won't invest any fiat at all BUT these users are still needed. There is no social media site that is a success without them.
General users are needed here not just investors. Once they do get here they are going to quickly find out that most of their content goes unnoticed. It doesn't matter if its a meme they have posted that only took two minutes to create or an opinion article that took them hours to create. Their content will mostly go unseen and undervalued in which will eventually piss them off to the point where they leave. Thus the sites user retention problem.
We can give such users the agrument that earning $0.20 USD on a topic here at HIVE is still $0.20 USD more than they would have earned on Facebook but our species are a fickle bunch. Such users don't see that they earned $0.20, they see that someone else made one hundred times that much for lesser content and in their eyes that's not fair so back to Facebook/Twitter they go. I don't see this mindset changing so thus there will likely always be the user retention problem.
The users themselves thinking like this is just the tip of the crypto iceberg. There's circle upvoting happening / Alt account upvoting and various other underminded things that are hurting the potential growth of new users. Downvotes are another hot topic and user retention deterrent, no-one likes negativity even if its warranted.
To put this in perspective, Facebook tried a "downvote" option and people went ape shit over it. Facebook then removed the downvote option as it caused unnecessary conflict. So if users get angry over downvotes that take no monetary value from them you can bet that they will go APE SHIT CRAZY when an upvote is applied that does take monetary value away. Some here on HIVE are a little too downvote happy / others use the option sparingly then there's others who simply ignore content they don't like without downvoting it. My opinion, a rework of the downvote button is needed. Keep the downvote button but have the downvote negatively effect the users rep only.
Tribes
Will Tribes be HIVE's saving grace?? Who knows, certainly not me but if one wanted to experiment with how a no downvote option would work creating a TRIBE to do just that in might be the Ideal way to find out. Am I going to create that TRIBE? Nope, I'm much too busy but if one happens to pop up with such a feature I bet there would be allot of eyes on it. Those "eyes" could one day end up being potential investors. TRIBES using tokens that are 2nd layer have their work cut out for them but they have shown that their USD value can surpass the value of the HIVE token itself. Maintaining value for a TRIBES token isn't something that has been mastered yet although sites like LeoFinance just might be able to break that mold.
TBH I think anyone earning anything on here should be grateful for it! The true value of most of our content is zero, it's the ownership of our content that's important with Hive - we power up the token to secure that!
Money's just a nice perk!
I 100% agree.
I also agree with the above.
Its this part I don't fully agree with. Sure that might of been the sentiment originally and still is for some. Currently it feels like most are here for the potential earnings. All one has to do is downvote a few topics and watch the reactions to see this is true.
Oh of course most people are here for the earnings. I don't generally vote for people who sell.
You kind of get a feeling about whose here for the ethics, and of course they are here for the money too, but I do tend to only support people who are here for both.
Of course I can't do anything about investors who just milk for curation returns!
!ENGAGE 25
ENGAGEtokens.I totally get what you're saying... and in practice most of the content on Hive is worth zero... but the thing is that companies and brands spend so much money trying to get people's attention and those all important clicks. The content on Hive might not be worth much, but the activity definitely isn't...
Yes fair point!
Yeah, it's a struggle. Ironically the post just next to this one in my feed was 2 selfies and had earnt $16 already. While everyone should be grateful for literally anything they do earn doing anything that isn't their official employment... Hive does feel like it's more about luck and catching the eye of heavy voters and/or curation groups than building up an engaged following.
I do hope this changes as Hive grows... obviously it would be a lot more fun if all our friends and family were on here voting each other instead of hanging out on traditional social media where you don't earn anything, but you do get so much more attention/interaction.
It's like you picked those words right from my brain. I always find it looks a little odd to see topics with decent earnings and 200+ upvotes but no engagement. I suspect outside investors look at such things as well.
!ENGAGE 25
Totally, obviously that's just investors autovoting to try and maximize their own curation rewards... and/or circle jerks. Ideally investors would delegate or trail curation groups so that the best content on the platform got the most rewards... but, y'know...
ENGAGEtokens.To be honest @rentmoney, I am not 100% sure about how to characterize this whole ecosystem as anything other than just a big experiment.
The money or rewards aren't really that much of an issue... as you pointed out, making 20 cents is more than making nothing on Facebook... and perhaps what we really end up worrying about here is the fickleness of people's expectations. And "expectations" invariably tend to be a slippery slope to discontent...
I see this place mostly as a potential for something, much like buying a lottery ticket. I enjoy the social aspects and the interesting people, the interaction; occasionally parking a piece of content... and maybe — in five years; in ten years — I'll have something like a small savings account balance here that might buy a couple of dinners, or a camping trip, or something.
=^..^=
There's a name I haven't seen in awhile.
I agree with you 100%. I haven't invested directly in HIVE but I have indirectly via Splinterlands. With the price of HIVE in freefall it might be time for me to sell some cards to attain some Cheap HIVE and roll that lottery dice.
!ENGAGE 10
ENGAGEtokens.Well, I also came here with zero and even though I invested some amount along the way, what I've gotten so far dwarfs what I've brought in by a huge gap.
I think we are still in that tweaking phase to see what breaks the ice as far as tribes are concerned, I'm open to experimentation, eventually we will get it right
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I just visited your blog, looks like you are doing great with rewards and engagement.
Congrats on running a successful blog.
Thank you very much
!ENGAGE 10
ENGAGEtokens.I think what you said is %100 true, (not the title but the content,) but that's only for now... It might get better or worse in the future.
I think one thing a new user should know, that most of the ones who get very high upvotes worked for them... I may get average of $10 per post now, but I spent many months earning average of $0.2 that I worked to get, (by spending time sharing in groups and being active outside my posts.)
If someone started 4 years ago and is earning average of $50 per post now, I have nothing but respect for them, staying consistent enough to reach this level.
That's an excellent mindset to have.
Nice title and this is always a good concept to review, as it helps to focus on building engagement and networking, then rewards can potentially follow.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Thanks, I had my fingers crossed that the title would grab the attention of some. To be honest I was expecting some downvotes from those who read the title but not the content.
!PIZZA
!BEER
@rentmoney! I sent you a slice of $PIZZA on behalf of @eii.
Learn more about $PIZZA Token at hive.pizza (7/10)
View or trade
BEER.Hey @rentmoney, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @eii for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.