This concept of earning a living is time-tested in so many different fields. 20 years ago, people were asking this very same question for the internet and wondering if it was possible to build some kind of website or blog or freelancing business, etc. and earn a living online.
Now that cryptocurrencies have entered this stage of being viewed as early-stage internet, I think this idea of "can you earn a living on crypto" is an interesting one to explore.
I did a quick google search to see what other outlets were talking about:
Even as I was typing these words into google, I could feel the sense of sleaziness. Whenever you search anything about making money online, earning passive income, etc. you are always bombarded with these fake influencers selling some kind of mastermind class on how to make money.
This idea of making money doing stuff that you enjoy doing is nothing new. When it comes to crypto, we have this doubly dangerous thing because if the wrong person convinces the right mark about some kind of "insider knowledge" they have, the innocent searcher might get caught up in an elaborate scheme where they send some Bitcoin to an address and never see it again.
Why I Am Interested in the Conversation
Earning money by doing what we love is something that all of us dream about. It's the golden dream of financial freedom and complete independence.
I don't look at things from the passive income angle much. That's always a dangerous rabbit hole to go down. In my personal opinion, there is no passive income approach that will get you anywhere UNLESS (and pay attention to this) you already have a sizable amount of capital to deploy into something that yields a low and reliable APY. Here I'm referring to people who can invest $250k (for example) into something that yields ~10% APY and make $25k.
In my part of the world, that is barely a livable income.. and you need $250k upfront to make it happen. This is obviously not an achievable practice for 99% of people - and it scales to where you live. If you only need $2k a year to live, then you only need $20k for your "passive income strategy", but getting $20k for you is just as hard as getting $250k for someone in another part of the world.
Enter Hive
Hive changes the conversation quite a bit in my mind. There are a lot of things that I hate about the "earn money online" ideas and influencers, but I do believe that Hive is a hidden gem.
Many on Hive - especially people who have come here for a short period of time and subsequently left - would refute the statement that someone can earn a living on Hive.
While this might be the case for you or me, it's not the case for everyone and we also have to bear in mind that this is an early stage platform.
Throughout my tenure on Steem, I blogged countless times about how people could actually make it their full-time job to write, work and earn on Steem. I look at Hive today and see an even easier environment to write, work and earn, thanks to communities, a better distribution of stake, etc.
While Hive is far from perfect, it continues to show potential and I believe that we need to continually push that narrative. The narrative that you can earn money by doing what you love on Hive. You can write blog posts, create videos, create artwork and share it, etc. You can even be a developer and meet project owners (like me) who want to hire you for various projects if you're talented. You can start your own project or even contribute in other ways like graphic design, logistical work, etc.
There are so many options here on Hive and I have had the good fortune of meeting dozens upon dozens of individuals who live their digital lives here on Hive and get paid for it. They oftentimes don't rely on Hive as their only source of income and I think that's perfectly okay.
Some people would say that if you don't live full-time on Hive (or can't), then it damages the narrative of inviting people to Hive and selling the dream of "come to Hive and do what you love and earn an income". I don't buy that. Like I said before, this is an early stage platform and if you invest time, capital, energy, etc. into this blockchain, I believe that it will pay off both in the short-term and especially so in the long-term.
$540 in the Past 30 Days
In author rewards only, I've earned $540 in the past 30 days blogging and creating 3speak videos on Hive. Also keep in mind that I don't use this account (@khaleelkazi) for my curation, project, and official activities. This account is strictly for writing these more personal blog posts/LeoFinance videos.
Like I said before, I live in a pretty expensive part of the world. $540 is a far cry from what I need to live each month. For now, blogging on Hive is not a viable career path for me.
With that said, I've built (and am actively building) a project on Hive. I work with a lot of incredibly talented people and I get to see many sides of this chain and earn HIVE in many other ways. To me, the value in those aspects of my daily activities here on Hive are way more valuable than anything I've gotten out of other social platforms/"online money making opportunities".
I don't mind the extra couple hundred $ a month I get from blogging. It's just extra crypto that I get to earn and stake in a blockchain project that I truly believe in.
For others, earning even a shred of that per month can be a game-changer in terms of saving money and opting-in to crypto.
The long-winded point that I'm trying to make here is that you can earn a living in crypto. You just might need to get very creative with how you do it.
The message that I want to send to the people out there googling "how to make money in crypto" is this:
You can make money in crypto, but you need to be extremely careful about who you trust and what you do with your existing capital and time. You should try everything, but try everything wisely.
Oh and you should definitely be trying Hive. You probably won't retire on what you make here, but this is your best shot at doing something that you're already passionate about -- be it blogging, drawing, vlogging, project buidling, etc. -- and earning something for your efforts.
LeoFinance is an online community for crypto & finance. We run several projects that are powered by Hive and the LEO token economy:
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I will say it is technically possible to earn a fair and consistent amount of money on Hive but not everyone can do it. People need to acknowledge that it takes a lot of time and some investment to get to that level of earnings
@tipu curate
I agree 100%. I should have emphasized in the post that I've also been on chain for nearly 4 years and have also chosen to build a lot of stuff here, particpate extensively in Discords, Twitter, Slack and other gathering places.. all in addition to regular blogging/videos/etc.
For me Hive is a full-time gig in terms of hours but not in terms of pay. I earn more than most authors on this chain, but not without having put in all these years of effort.
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A lot of persistence and drive as well. Most people fail in all forms of social media as a result. Having these doesn't guarantee you either.
Note that those $540 you’ve earned the past month is while HIVE is cruising at 23 - 25 cents. With HIVE at $1 those very same blogs would have earned you $2200....
Needless to start mentioning what it would look like if price starts climbing for real...
Very true. I wanted to keep this about real-time and tangible earnings, but my viewpoint is the same as yours in that I'm holding on to that $540 in hopes that it is $2k or $20k in the future if Hive succeeds. We're so damn early.
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I think you have Said it all, it depends on the country, in my own county $540 is pretty enough to live for close to two months if you're a minimum Spender. But then I feel in the future we might just do more than blogging to earn on hive and countless of opportunities might just open up. I feel the long-term will even be better
Thanks for that info, I'm always curious to hear about living costs in other places of the world. That $540 for me is not enough to live on so I just reinvest and HODL HIVE (as mentioned in my response here to Mindtrap).
I hope that HIVE can continue to grow and also that more authors can come here and get some level of earnings that are meaningful to them - no matter where they live in the world. I think we're well on our way
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Great post! I think the most valuable capital is time. People ask themselves how to make more money, instead of asking the better question how do I get more time? Because I believe most people want money because they dread the 9-5 and the constant hustle for a day to day living. We earn money to buy goods to make us feel we can relax in the little time which was left after exhausting ourselves to get those money. So we can struggle to get more money while we use more of our time. Quite detrimental long term
Now here comes the crypto and the creation in play. You described the perfect dream for most people: doing what you like and earning a living out of it. Before trying to think about making rivers of money, I think people should really think: how do I want to do in life? What I am really passioned about? The recipe for success comes from following what you desire, the money is a bonus. Because if people would turn to blogging just to make money, they would dread the day they have to write content just the same as they would dread the 9-5.
I strongly believe in the power of Hive. For those who discovered their calling in life, their creative urge to create (no matter what), being on Hive is a gold mine. And even if most people will not be able to support themselves living on Hive income now, I am sure the future will look different 10 years from now.
You see, for a platform to succeed to deliver to the expectactions, it needs people with a dream, with a passion. Not only for the money, but for creation.
This was a nice read, thank you!
!ENGAGE 10
Great attitude and perspective Mary, I agree with you. Being passionate about writing creative content, I am super happy on Hive, and have all my time in the world to write and blog. I would like it if the income was a little better, but hopefully Hive will climb in price. Here in South Africa I have a dream world of cheap and easy living all year long with minimal expenses, so have made Hive blogging my full time career, along with other side incomes on the ground. What a pleasure this life is - creative content writing and vlogging on my personal passions like consciousness, and crypto.
Hello! You made your dream come true! I am very happy for you and I applaud your effort! There is always a lot of work behind our accomplishments, it is easy to believe that success comes flying for talented people. It does not. I am sure that behind your success story there are many hours of work and dedication.
We as creators have this amazing bonus that we can happily live by spiritually fueling our dreams with the energy which comes from creating. Even if the rewards come later in life. You see, I think you were a success even before starting to make a living on what you do. Because you woke up in the morning excited and happy to pursue your passion. It was only natural for it to become a full time thing after you dedicated effort, perseverance and faith to your dream.
I always smile when I hear a success story😊
Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!
!ENGAGE 10
ENGAGEtokens.I live in Greece and I chose to follow my dreams so I make a living exclusively from the money I make online. Hive is 80% of my income at the moment! I am earning around 200$/month and that's enough money to pay my rent and bills here but not enough to live a decent life of course.
It is possible to make a living from Hive. The more Hive matures and the more the price rises, the easier it will be to earn more on chain. The only thing I do not like though is that the same thing that was happening to Steem is happening here too. You can see a ton of HUGE automated votes on the same accounts and smaller accounts struggle to get noticed.
There was a lot more curation on smaller accounts when Hive launched some months ago though. I hope this changes soon and smaller accounts can once again enjoy some bigger upvotes.
Hey there great to hear your experience, I'm trying hard to earn a living on Hive as writing and blogging or vlogging is a passion of mine. I do it every day most of the day. Any advice would be recommended. I would love to and plan to travel while blogging. I'm earning about $100 a month on a good month on Hive but need to 4x that, so keen to hear any advice, many thanks. Is it worth posting more than once a day for example?
Hello @julianhorack and sorry for the late reply! Just be yourself, comment on other people's posts and share high quality posts.
I am sharing 2-3 posts every day so if you can post more than once I think you should try it!
Cool many thanks buddy, I will up my output and push the Hive program of content creation.
I think it is dangerpus to put all ones eggs in the same basket. Diversification of income sources provides a sense of security that just Hive alone never could achieve.
I think it depends on where you live. I like hearing stories about how someone in a developing country is able to keep a roof over their head and put food on the table by blogging on Hive.
But as another writer said, the important thing is to keep growing your stake and diversify your income sources. I use the Brave browser and generate BAT tokens while I'm researching and writing my blog posts. When that amount grows large enough, I'll take about half and buy Bitcoin and then part of that will be used to power up HIVE. Helping to keep that snowball of crypto rolling downhill...
source
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ENGAGEtokens.An interesting publication that inspires work on the Hive platform. But I still do not understand much. I'll try a little more to work. Thank you for the fascinating article. I wish you success.
Thanks for the inspiration, I spend most of my time writing articles and posting them on Hive daily, but can only manage about $100 at best per month. Hive only really works well with one post a day. I could post more since I am an avid writer of articles on bitcoin, consciousness, nature travel (via 3Speak videos), politics and world news affairs. Is there any advice as to how I can increase my income on Hive with these single posts a day? Perhaps I need to comment and curate more? I have no coding or dev skills at all, only content creation. I am super passionate about writing and blogging. I do it all day every day just about. So this is my life and love, yet I need to 4x my profit in Hive tokens here. Therefore I'm sincerely asking your advice, based on your post and your experience as a leader on Hive. Many thanks @khaleelkazi.
for the moment the big issue is that you might have made that 540 in "income" but that did not raise your stake in the platform and if you want to "live" off hive you need a decent stake here.
So there has to be a balance between the amount you take out and the amount you power up to support the community that is commenting your posts
One doesn’t need to make a living on Hive. Many people are on pensions or benefits that are a fixed amount of income every month. Hive offers the potential to supplement that income. In addition, that supplemental income can grow over time unlike the pension income.
One can roughly do the same with rental income or dividend paying stocks. I think Hive and income investments are fairly equivalent, except that Hive offers greater influence on the growth of the income through sweat equity.
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Social media is hard af to be successful. Less than 1% of people who do social media have any reasonable amount of success, much less do "well". It takes a lot of work to build an audience, to keep their attention, and create a bond.
Hive is social media. Hive has the same issues, in fact I would say Hive is easier than most social media sites, I've had some success in social media, but I have done far better on Hive than anywhere else. I also put far more time and attention into it as well.
The thing I think a lot of people don't realize, you are not entitled to an audience, you need to earn it. While this is critically important for social media, it's hard when you see someone post a meme they stole from Reddit and they made $40 and you poured your soul into a post and made $0.20. The other thing about Hive is it is not fair. The distribution will always have flaws as the distribution is controlled by humans.
That being said, I have always recommended people since I got here to focus on respecting your reader's time and attention, always try to offer value, and never focus on yourself. I don't know shit, and I might be full of it, but those have always been my core tenants regarding how I interact here.
this process is too time-consuming but you gata work were ever you are
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Yep. There are many factors in play, but at least on Hive no one is contained by an algorithm or use case for the platform - quite the opposite - we can build our own use cases and experiences (as you have done) to benefit and suit us. There is no mould to fit into, Hive is a factory that prints moulds.
I am probably among one of the highest earners (from content alone - witnesses, large curators and HDF beneficiaries earn more) on the platform and very few people know how much work it has taken to get to this point for years - plus the luck involved on top. The earnings for me (living in the nordics) are not going to change my world, so I keep investing them in, staking, diversifying a little for the future.
But as you say, this is early days and if it does take off, there will literally be thousands of people in potentially live changing situations. I have never understood how so many early adopters failed to build a foundation here - but then, many do what they want, even if what they want to do doesn't take them to where they want to be.
It's a fascinating subject and thanks for sharing your view, while it might not be a viable income in most countries it can be a way to start creating an online income without taking money from your own pocket, that's basically how the CTPtalk tribe is set up to accomplish, earn money blogging and vlogging and then use Firepay to get the tools to create your own private basic income doing what you like, keep up your great work.
It’s hard to do, but I try as much as possible to not think in terms of dollars earned but instead to think in terms of Hive earned. The dollar is old school, a dying parasite. Any dollar I might earn today is guaranteed to have less purchasing power five years from now. The same cannot be said of Hive. If I ever get to live off of Hive, it won’t be because I earned dollars and spent them, it’ll be because I earned Hive and reinvested it.
Considering the reality of Brazil and the Real (the country's currency), it is possible to earn good money here at Hive. For example: Monthly, I can earn more than the minimum wage that is paid (in a formal / off-line job) here in my country.
Quite an emotional post I read here. Here is my answer/response.
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I agree with you that it is possible to earn a living blogging on HIVE.
I am a living witness.
But it will require a level of hardwork and committed.
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