What If Posting Was My Job? A Thought Experiment on Earning Through Hive, Steem, and Blurt
As I looked back at my recent posts, I started wondering: if I were to post content on Hive, Steem, and Blurt consecutively for one hour, how much would I actually earn? The thought crossed my mind—if I treated this as an official job, what would my hourly income look like with the level of support I currently have? Let's be clear that I'm only focusing on what I earn as an author, not a curator.
Now, I’m not planning to quit my job and start posting content full-time, but I thought it would be an interesting thought experiment.
Let’s start with Steem. I get almost no support from Steem users these days, mostly because I don’t know many English-speaking users on the platform anymore. It’s ironic, since that’s where I first got started—and probably where many of you did as well. Since the big exodus, my average earnings from Steem have been about $0.00. Sure, I’ve had a few anomalies, even hitting $0.03 on some posts, but that doesn’t reflect my true average, so I won’t count those. For now, it’s safe to say I don’t earn anything on Steem.
Moving on to Hive, things look more consistent. While my earnings can vary a lot, once I factor in the split between author rewards and curator rewards, the numbers even out. Excluding major anomalies, I average about $0.16 per post after curator distribution. Hive’s ecosystem is far more advanced and productive than the others, and if I factored in Hive token earnings, the numbers would look much better—but those fluctuate heavily depending on the timeframe, so I’ll leave them out for now.
Blurt is actually my favorite of the three. My earnings there aren’t above $0.50 per post yet, but they directly compete with what I make on Hive. The range feels a little less volatile—though I haven’t tracked it precisely. On average, after curator distribution, I earn about $0.14 per post on Blurt.
Here’s the tally:
Steem: $0.00
Hive: $0.16
Blurt: $0.14
That means I earn about $0.30 per post when spread across these platforms. If I posted every 10 minutes for an hour, that would come out to roughly $1.80 per hour.
Now, if I kept that pace for four hours a day, I wouldn’t exactly be living in luxury—but I also wouldn’t be in abject poverty. Four hours would bring me $7.20, which is more than double the global poverty line, and if I maintained that daily, I’d make about $216 per month.
Of course, it’s not impossible to make 24 posts in 24 hours, but the real challenge would be finding enough content. Think about it: 24 posts a day translates to 720 posts in a month. Could I really come up with 720 meaningful or interesting topics? Maybe—but the quality of posts would almost certainly suffer.
Still, it’s been a fun thought experiment. Who knows—maybe one day I’ll actually try to pull off 24 posts in 24 hours. It would definitely be exhausting, but it could be an interesting challenge.