Back in the optimistic past, an era known as Spring 2020, I thought I might start playing Splinterlands for fun and profit. However, I needed to get onboarded to Hive. I chose Ecency to onboard with, for literally no reason. I had no idea what I was doing, what the different interfaces were, why I needed Hive, what Hive was, how important all those keys and passwords would be, I mean, I barely know anything at all.
Now, so many months later, I have started to figure out some things about Hive, and Ecency and I would like to share what I have learned so that hopefully it doesn't take you 18 months like it took me!
I am really happy that Ecency is my portal to Hive blogging. I do use other platforms, but the power, ease-of-use, and rewards of using Ecency are very, Very, VERY strong. From my Ecency wallet page, I can see my vote strength, my Hive account, my microscopic SPK holdings, my Hive-Engine wallet, I can claim posting rewards, claim token contract rewards, I can transfer Hive and HBD, I can power up, power down, send to savings, withdraw from savings, get notifications of comments and new posts from those I follow, and probably other things that I am forgetting.
That is a lot, right? Yes, it is. It is awesome.
And, all the while when I am using Ecency, I am earning Ecency Points. Points for being alive (small heartbeat deposits for being online), points for posting, commenting, reblogging, etc etc.
Those Points can not be traded, though, so in one way, they are like those irritating "Candies" that certain sites pretend to reward you with. But in a more important sense, Points have compelling use cases. The most important two are:
- Gifting, which you can use to tip posts you really like, especially if your upvote is not worth so much or you have run out of other tipping tokens
- Adding value to your posts! This is what I will talk about in this post.
I am not a super active blogger. Maybe 98% of what I do is on Hive and you can see from my history that 98% of not very much is still not very much. Obviously on Hive, consistency of posting quality content is key. So, I am not doing my part as well as I should. But when I do post, it is nice to know that I can use my engagement through Ecency to sweeten the pot a little.
When you make a post, you can select a couple of options from the Ecency dashboard. If you have a lot of Ecency Points and want to use them, two appealing options are Boost and Promote.
As far as I can tell, Promote makes your posts a bit more visible to people who are not already following you. If you want to build a readership or be considered for upvotes by new eyeballs, this is a nice option. I have no idea what the ROI is for Promote, I suspect it has a lot to do with how broadly appealing and well-written the post is.
Boost seems like it is designed to help you convert your Ecency Points into Hive, Hive Power (HP) or Hive Backed Dollars (HBD). It is like adding an upvote from a high HP account to your post. More on that in a bit. When you select Boost, you choose how much, sign the approval and then your Points are deducted right then and there.
For both options, you can decide within a set range how many of your Points you want to use for Promote or Boost. Now, I always thought that using Boost was like a smart contract - I select how many Points to use and it magically and automatically turns into HP and HBD in about a week, like other upvotes.
That is NOT how it works. What actually is happening is that when you use Boost, it goes into a queue that actual human curators look over. If they do not approve your Boost, or if they simply can not get to it in time, your Points are refunded and your Boost does not happen. They have a budget of upvotes that I have been told is affected by the price of Hive. When Hive is booming, they can approve more, and more generous Boosts. When Hive prices are low, there is less to go around and they can't give as much away. And, I was told, in order to support as many people as possible, they tend to prioritize minimum value Boosts.
I definitely did not know that!
As I said before, I do not post very frequently, so my thought had been to max out my Boost whenever I had Points. So, every time I posted and had 500 Points, I would max Boost.
Over the past few months, I was getting frustrated because almost every time, my Boost would be refunded. I was annoyed that I could not get the system to work and that my Points were not adding value to my posts. As is often the case, my annoyance was based on faulty assumptions about how the system worked. Knowing what I know now, I totally get why my Boosts failed.
So, to help you out, here are the tips I have been given by experienced Ecency users and curators. Their info is in italics, and my editorializing is in plain old text:
- Boost all you want, but be patient. There are real humans doing this work for us! OK, that is my own personal tip, no one I talked to told me to be more patient...they are too nice for that haha! But, be more patient!
- Expect that at current Hive prices, there is not enough Boosting power to go around, so some proportion of your Boosts requests will not go through no matter how awesome your content is (again, I am extrapolating a bit here)
- When requesting a Boost, choose the minimum amount. The moderators want to support the community, so they seem inclined to give boosts to more people, which means smaller boosts. That makes sense to me.
I hope this post helps clarify some of the features of Ecency and how to best use Ecency Points, and I hope you enjoyed it! As always, feel free to Follow me if you like and ask any questions or make any comments that strike your fancy!
Thanks to @melinda010100 and @bombus for their info and tips on this topic!!
