I started writing and posting seriously in 2017, and I obviously started doing it on Steemit. My main goal back then was to make enough money to buy a new computer.
I was lucky enough to get some money with some of my early posts, but after that a lot of what I published was rewarded with only a few cents per post.
Now, that's not really that bad. After all, you're making some money for something you're posting on the Internet. A lot of people would happily welcome the money. However, I had a specific goal, one that was quite expensive, and making cents every day was not helping me get to that goal fast enough.
After doing some research, both on the website and outside of it, I discovered the internal market of Steemit, where you can buy and sell STEEM and SBD. It works like any other market, except that you're limited to the two currencies on the platform.
I'm not sure what made me want to try to get into trading, so I'm not gonna be able to talk about that, but I will say that choosing to trade, for whatever reason, was a really good idea and I'm happy I did it.
The way it works is very simple - you choose which coin you want to focus on, and then you begin trading in order to make profit on that specific coin. You sell your coin when the price is high, and you buy it when the price is low, this way making profit.
My main focus back then was to increase my STEEM coins since I was fairly optimistic that it will grow at some point and I'll be able to buy the computer I so much wanted. So, I started trading for the next 6 months hoping I'll be able to get something out of it.
I had days in which I managed to make 10 extra STEEM, and days in which I was able to make 50 or more. In 6 months I went from around 250 STEEM (or 400, can't really remember what was the initial sum) to around 1000, and soon after getting there the price started to rise, thus giving me the opportunity to accomplish my goal.
After that, I kept publishing on Steemit for a while, but gave up eventually, having to focus on more important things.
I recently got back into writing, and with it, trading on the internal market of Steemit became an option once again. However, I soon realized that Steemit has changed and that a lot of the people who used to post there migrated to Hive, which is what I did as well.
So I chose Hive as my main platform and began writing and posting on it almost on a daily basis, just a few weeks ago. Since then, I also began trading, little by little, in hopes of increasing my already existing coins in order to reinvest some of the money, and have some financial security for the future.
The same concept applies on Hive as well, because the platform is quite the same - you choose which coin you want to focus on, and you trade with the objective of increasing the number of chosen coins. In my case, I focus mainly on Hive, because I find it much easier to make a profit focusing on it rather than trying to get more HBD.
The only difference is that the marketplace on Hive is a bit slower, and so it takes some time to trade for profit, but it can be done. In the past few weeks I went from around 120 Hive/ 40 HBD to currently having 190 Hive/ 79 HBD. Those numbers are based on the current value of Hive and HBD on the marketplace which can change at any time.
I wanted to talk about this because I'm sure that there are people on this platform who don't really know about this side of Hive, who didn't even know about the marketplace being a thing on Steemit.
It offers you a great chance to increase your profits. Obviously, you need to be REALLY CAREFUL with how you trade and how you handle your losses / gains. You can easily lose a lot of what you have. It's also hard to accept that sometimes, all the money you make in a day through trading can be lost the same day, in a few minutes, if you make a bad move.
But while there's some risk involved, as with almost everything, there's also a chance for profit. Being careful, trying to look for patterns and trying to understand how the entire thing works might result in some extra profit that you can use as you choose to.
If you're curious, you can go to your wallet on Hive, click on either Hive or Hive Dollars, and then choose the option "Market". This is not a tutorial on how to use the marketplace, so you'll need to figure out how to do it on your own, or search for a tutorial.
Regardless, it's a great way to increase your Hive revenue and make some extra coins every day, without having to post.