A couple of weeks ago when I went to do my monthly claim of tips I noticed that what I had earned was considerably lower than what it typically is. Confused I went back over my posts and realized that while my follower count has been increasing the views on my posts had decreased. I decided to try and get to the bottom of this and over the last week have posted at different times but still about the same general things to see how they would perform.
In my eyes, the results were not good at all. On any given post on average, I will receive 1,200+ views and those that take-off will get 3,000+ however now my posts seem to be struggling to hit even 1,000 views often getting stuck in the 700-900 range. What added to my confusion was the continual increase in followers as it was not like I had stopped growing my audience so I decided to dive a little bit deeper into possible explanations.
What first came to my mind was with the market being down maybe my topics were not as interesting as they once had been. This made a ton of sense to me so I was ready to accept it until I went and checked Publish0x's stats that they have for us at the bottom of any page you are on. Going over this data and comparing it to my post's performance I began to see there did appear to be a relationship. Now I cannot say that what I am seeing and correlating it with is 100% correct but it is a trend that I think should be paid attention to.
When you look at the user growth, published posts, and tips generated graphs provided by Publish0x you will notice that everything was trending upwards until June 2021. It was at this point that for two months there was a sharp decrease across all of the categories. Going back through Igor's posts though I was able to find a solid explanation of what had happened that would have triggered such a regression (here is the link to his article).
At the time and even now I believe most authors would continue to support what was done as this website is so much more than just earning crypto it is a fantastic place to learn about the space. However, as we can see from the data user posts and tips generated fell through July before slightly increasing again in August. Since August though a trend line can clearly be drawn on both graphs heading in a negative direction. Now there have been a couple of months that had increases but none to offset the clearly defined trendline.
One thing that has more or less had a mind of its own was the user growth as once it fell in June 2021 through December of 2021 it remained in a fairly stable zone with between 10,000 and 15,000 users added each month. Since the start of this year though it is safe to say that user growth has fallen off of a cliff. In January of 2022, 15,770 new users were added However, that fell by 4,000 the following month and now it sits at 8,585 number not seen since the launch of the website at the end of 2019! Naturally, this is not good at all and with posts and tips decreasing while users are growing this issue needs to be addressed as this does not bode well for the long-term survival of the site.
Now it is easy to sit back and say we have an issue someone should do something about it and so I want to try and take a stab at what I would do to try and reverse these trends. I am sure there will be both supporters and dissenters with my ideas and as someone interested in coming up with a solution, I would love for you to comment below.
So what would I do?
Idea One
To get the low-hanging fruit out of the way I think it is safe to say that Statera (STA) has not been embraced by the community on this site. You do not see that many posts about it and personally after withdrawing it once or twice I stopped in hopes of a new token taking its place. I also think now would be a good time to replace STA as all altcoins are currently down so it does not hurt those of us holding it right now too bad. There is also the option to just drop STA for now and instead allow for tips to be given in AMPL until a suitable replacement can be found.
Sticking with replacing STA two different paths could be taken. The first would be to continue having one token be on another chain besides ETH the second option is to go back to having both chains on ETH. While I do have a preference I want to touch on the pros for each of these.
Staying on Fantom Opera or other low-cost blockchains
Keeping a tipping token on another blockchain allows users to continue to benefit from lower gas fees on these other chains. There are many different options to choose from however I think it would be best if the tipping token was what you would pay transaction fees in on the blockchain so if we stay on Fantom Opera having the tip be in FTM would be ideal since it would allow you to utilize the blockchain much more than receiving a token that cannot pay the gas for you to exchange it. If it is decided to leave Fantom entirely other options are of course fellow Layer 1 blockchain Cardano (ADA) or a Layer 2 solution like Polygon (MATIC). I did not include options like Solana (SOL) or Avalanche (AVAX) due to their price being much higher compared to Fantom.
Returning to Ethereum
The reason why STA was brought in was to get one of the tokens off of the Ethereum blockchain since at the time gas fees were so high. Since gas fees have dropped pretty significantly and for a noticeable amount of time it could be decided to go back to one of these tokens or even ETH itself. There are a ton of interesting projects that are on the Ethereum whose tokens I believe would interest people. Some ideas for this are The Graph or metaverse tokens like SAND or MANA.
Idea Two
Now, that the tips have been addressed another area of focus could be the comment section. The comment section should be leveraged to create and foster relationships between the authors and the readers. Putting into place a feature like for a certain number of comments you earn an extra tip or something along those lines could be used to address this. Bonus tips would increase the likelihood of comments and thus an increase in engagement. By encouraging and promoting this engagement the chances of people continuing to come back and participate.
Idea Three
Twitter engagement. Crypto Twitter has been a huge meeting place for people and really like Elon Musk said serves as a "town square". With this in mind either spending money on ads or starting some sort of program directed at this audience could be extremely beneficial for a couple of reasons. The first of course would be an increase in new users and user engagement but the second reason would be the exposure that Publish0x would get which could result in DAO, companies, or others engaging with Publish0x for competitions or even have their token added as a tipping token to increase the number of people who are exposed to it.
Any or all of these ideas I feel could help spur a change in the current trajectory of the site. While crypto has been severely beaten down recently this does give everyone a chance to reevaluate and organize what they are doing and how they are doing it. The net effect couple means a site that many more people visit and enjoy resulting in wins for everyone across the board!
Please know I am not a financial advisor and make sure you do your own research! If you enjoyed this article and would like to further support me below are a few referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_
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