Content Ownership in Web3: What I Learned from 12 Years of Blogging for Nothing

OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com

In this article, I just want to share my past struggles with Web2 and the newfound potential of Web3 blogging on Hive.

I forgot the exact year I started blogging. If I am not mistaken, it was in 2009.

Since then, I have been exploring how to earn online via blogging. Unfortunately, after 12 years, I never earned a single cent from blogging, although I have been squatting in cyberspace here in there, such as blogspot.com. wordpress.com, squidoo, etc. Some of these platforms completely disappeared like ghosts. All my efforts crafting those articles have been wasted. That’s what happened on the Web2 platform. Since you don’t own your content and it is centrally controlled, they can censor your content anytime, and they can disappear without prior notice.

Here is the link to the directory of my blogs throughout all those years.

All in all, I have 29 blogs with topics ranging from economics to spirituality, theology, personal journey in life, and whatever comes to my mind. Many of them are unfinished, and I just managed to publish a few articles except for Only by Grace, Studies in Economics, and Theological Educator.

None of the above blogs gave me a single cent. Of course, in 2009, when I started writing Search Engine Optimized (SEO) articles for clients on oDesk (which is UpWork now), I earned for almost a year when I became jobless at that time. Thanks to my sister, who allowed me to stay in their house when I was exploring the ways to earn online.

Nevertheless, though I know how to write SEO articles, for me personally, it was too mechanistic. Writing for search engines is different from writing for human readers. I see how such an SEO approach has been abused by content creators. I think Google has already evolved into a more organic and human approach to content creation.

However, something changed in 2021. In the providence of God, He used COVID-19 to bring me to Hive, a Web3 platform. Here, no one can censor you. The most important aspect of this new blogging platform is that you own all the data you publish. And since it is built on blockchain technology, it will remain in the digital space forever, including your mistakes and the number of versions you edited your original content. This calls for responsibility. You should not publish anything on a Web3 platform that would jeopardize your security or anything that can be used against you.

The good thing about the Web3 platform is that you don’t need to be an expert writer to earn. You can write about any interest that you like, and you can find any community that suits your tastes. It could be cooking, singing, traveling, sports, or whatever interests you have. You can share a micro post like the one you see on Twitter, a picture of your travel, or write a long article if that’s what you prefer.

Though the incentive appears insignificant and small, it is preferable to earning nothing from your content. Here is an example of a blog by my youngest son. His username is Ajac, and he has been publishing the reflection papers he submitted during the last semester. The book that he covered is authored by an influential Puritan churchman, The Reformed Pastor:

His reflection on the book was divided into eight separate articles with 500 words minimum each. The incentive countdown for the 7th article is not yet done. It has a seven-day window before we can determine the final incentive. As for the 8th and the last article, I updated this post since it was already published.

Let us say that the last two articles will receive a 0.80 HIVE incentive each; the total reward for all the posts will be 6.30 HIVE, and 50% of that will go to his digital wallet after seven days. With HIVE's current market price, that’s more or less 70.00 PHP. Lower than my original computation. Anyhow, do you know of any platform that gives an incentive like this? After more or less two months of blogging, the Hive account of my son grew from zero to close to $35.00.

Do you think you can do this? This is the new wave of the Internet. Better learn it now. We are in the transition stage from the Web2 to the Web3 platform. If you are looking for genuine user empowerment, you can find them on web3 platforms like Hive. The advantages of using this new version of the Internet include ownership and control of your data, inclusive monetization opportunities, censorship resistance, and decentralization. You cannot find these qualities in the existing Web2 platforms.

Grace and peace!

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