I'm about to turn five in a few months, as a Hive blogger, and I still remember my first day on the block and also "the front page" of Steemit from back then that I used to create this account. Back then it was free to create a Steem(Hive) account, but it took me about two weeks before I got the confirmation mail. 

I guess all of you know by now that this thing is blockchain-powered, thus you don't have any regular password that you use to log into your account as you do with facebook or twitter. Hive is WEB3, darling...

Back to the beginning. 

Right on the front page of Steemit was writing something like *this is the place where content creators get paid to upload content*, or something like that if I remember correctly and many got hooked by that line. *Have fun and get paid*, you said? I had to get in...

![photo_20221212_160711.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/uiGkI9G.jpg)

It took me however about three years until I actually made it to the point that monetizing my content was really "worth it". Something that most of the new users right now don't have to bother with IMO... I find it way easier nowadays, thanks to communities/tribes to get yourself noticed and monetize your content. 

It was a hell of a hustle back then cuz it was all messy. Nevertheless, even today, you shouldn't expect to get rich overnight from creating content on Hive and you should not take anything for granted. You might get the occasional @appreciator, @newsflash or @trafalgar, or any other large whale upvotes but to be in the position of "relying on constant curation" you need something more than luck.

You need yourself a network, and by network, I'm pointing to the community you create yourself outside any regular community such as leofinance, threespeak, liketu, or whatever. You have to earn that network, or better said your spot in that community, you can't buy it. At least that's how it happened to me. 

In the beginning, I was quite a loner because I got all that thing *create and get paid* a whole lotta twisted. First of all, you don't get paid here by anyone, there's no entity paying you anything around here, except the blockcahin's interest you get for holding HIVE or HBD, but the "money you make" for posting are actually gifts. 

All the curators sitting on piles of HP "running around" the blockchain and curating content are actually gifting people they like some coins from the daily generated reward pool based on their stake and "ability to share". Hence, you need to connect to such individuals, and not only, so you can stay afloat. 

I don't know how many newbies will read this post but if I were a fresh new user right now I'd first go out and explore a bunch of communities that I feel attracted to and start consuming content and engaging with the authors before anything. Engagement should be a priority even before content creation becomes that. 

The ones that are going to "stick with you" and support your content, even without reading it most of the time, are the folks that "you earned" through your character and your engagement. I guarantee you that 90% of the curation going on right now on the blockchain is done blindly. Very few still go through posts before actually curating them. 

Most of that(upvoting content) is done automatically through auto votes or superficially, although still manually by just "hitting the like button" on faces you like, thus *dear newbie* make yourself likeable before you start wasting hours a day on putting out content and being a lone wolf. I've been there and I've done that and it's such a waste of time. 

Instead of trying your luck with four damn posts a day or whatever, stick to one or two a day but get in touch with as many alike people as you can. Once you've made "enough friends", you will be able to earn with one post more than what you were earning at the beginning with a bunch of them combined but no network at all. Everybody has content, but few have a community...

Think of that.

*Thanks for your attention,*
*Adrian*   

Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/@acesontop/the-newbies-abc-tale-1-what-you-got-wrong-about-hive)