I just read a post that I liked very much. It was discussing whether you could get rich on Internet, e.g., by publishing on publish0x. And the answer was essentially "No". However, getting money for coffee isn't all that bad either. However, the post (which I unfortunately cannot find again -- hint to the publish0x team, I would appreciate a history list of the posts I have read) gave me some thoughts.

I find myself posting more often here and on uptrennd, which is the other main blog site I use currently, but I also notice that the behaviour on the both sites is remarkably different. This is not to say that either of the sites is better than the other, but it is interesting to see the differences. 

I will first describe the mechanisms on both sites and then discuss my observations in comparison.

General/Similarities

Both sites provide a tipping mechanism, but they are slightly different. Common to both is that you get crypto for writing and for reading (or visiting). The writer can get a fair amount depending on his or her popularity, and the reader has a limited amount available for tipping, which also means you can only get so much from reading other people's stuff.

This is of course quite obvious, since just visiting other pages is easy, while writing is more difficult.

But here the similarities end, at least as far as I can see... now for the differences:

Uptrennd

Uptrennd is a community that pays out in 1Ups. This is their own token, but it is pretty OK to work with. The basic idea is that you have activity levels, and you also stake some of your tip money on upgrading your level. The higher level you are the higher the tipping coefficient becomes and the more you per "upvote". This is the appreciation score the number of activities you perform, AND the number of upvotes you get on your articles and your comments. There is no grading of your tipping, it is one unit per person who likes your article, and one unit for each upvote on a comment you've written. Simple and pretty easy to understand too. 

The crucial point is the coefficient you get per level, and upgrading requires some effort too. The first levels are easy, but then you need to be very active in order to continue. This does have some interesting effects as I will discuss below.

Publish0x

The tipping mechanism is the main difference here. Now, you don't get anything for commenting, although it will of course increase your exposure, and get you followers who might want to tip you. One major difference on the other hand is that you cannot tip everybody you want, since there is an incubation time for each tip you give. One tip a day per author, and a shorter incubation time after each tip.

Tipping in publish0x is in different currencies, currently it seems to be DAI and BAT, mostly. There are separate withdrawal limits for each currency, which is reasonable, but it does make it a slower process to earn money. As a writer you get as much tips as your popularity serves you. This is of course good, but I do have some concerns with it as well, which I will get back to in next section.

Observations 

Both these sites have an underlying idea of that you will get crypto while you are blogging. However, to me it seems that the reward systems do trigger different behaviours from the writers and from the readers. I often cross post on these two sites (as this post is an example of) since I feel that it is two different communities with somewhat similar interests (essentially crypto). 

When I post the same article on both places, I can definitely see differences in how the sites work. Here are my main points:

1) Posting frequency: on uptrennd people post a lot! It's not necessarily bad, since many posts provide quality. But there are a number of low quality posters too, who just seem to want upvotes (for nothing). Of course, they can get it since upvoting is not severely limited, apart from that you cannot upvote the same person several times in a row. 

On publish0x there seems to be more serious posts (rather less of low quality posts), probably since you compete for a limited amount of tipping. So, you need to write something useful to earn something which makes sense.

2) Tipping: the tipping mechanism on publish0x is sometimes very frustrating, when you realise that you didn't read the best article until you have spent your tipping quota. This is not a problem on uptrennd, since you can always upvote (like) an article. There is also.something equalitarian about that you cannot give anything more than the upvote. 

On uptrennd, however, people seem to be upvoting most everything, even simple comments, such "Thanks, good post!", which of course is somewhat similar to the upvote itself. The amount of "meaningless" comments to an article is a little depressing, but that is how it works. Non-productive comments are discouraged, but still come from mostly newbies on the system.

3) Commenting: This is maybe the biggest difference, still. On uptrennd I receive quite a large number of good comments (discarding the non-interesting ones (above). People do comment there. On publish0x, however, comments are really rare, even when I get a large amount of tips. This is a bit sad, since I appreciate feedback on my posts. So, sometimes, even though you get crypto, you feel a bit disappointed when you look at your posts.

Conclusions?

Well, I am but a newbie here, but I think there are some interesting differences between the sites. And to some extent I think it deals a bit, at least, with why people write blogs. 

1) You want to be famous or influential. In this case, I think neither of these platforms are ideal. Hey, they are pretty small, still. But you may become a local blogging celebrity, which might be good enough.

2) You want to express yourself, and maybe help others on the way. Now this is different, since, even though it's still about you, it is a extroverted part of it too. You want to tell others about how you think or feel, an hopefully someone can get something from it.

3) You want to make (easy) money. This is probably one of the more interesting reason for blogging on these platforms. But you will most likely not be rich from it. But if you think you do  then it will most likely affect your activity on the platform. And it will be different depending on the appreciation system used.

The first conclusion I can draw from my first month on both sites is that the crypto rewards are definitely affecting how people interact on these platforms.

Uptrennd encourages interaction and commenting to a much higher degree than publish0x. The downside here is the amount of non-interesting comments that appear as a result. Through its hierarchic reward system it also encourages active users both as writers and as authors (if you are not publishing it takes a long time to rise in the hierarchy). It seems that it also encourages more of writing for earning crypto, than publishing important information. 

I am not sure about how to encourage quality more, since you don't really want to limit people's creativity. But maybe there should be a limit to how many posts you can post per week or similar. But I also think that it would be useful to be able to grade your upvotes. A high quality article could be awarded three upvotes, where a standard article could receive one of them. Maybe even an upvote managing system could be invented. I have some ideas about such a mechanism, but that may be for another post.

Publish0x does encourage the writing of good posts, as well as active reading. However, one problem is that the tipping and commenting systems do have some drawbacks, which on the other hand could be remedied quite easily.

1) Encourage serious commenting. One possibility would be to allow the author to signal a small tip to good comments (just a 20%). In this case the author doesn't get any crypto him- or herself, it just encourages commenting.

2) Make it possible to queue tipping. Even if you have run out of your current tip quota, you could add maybe five additional tips to a tipping queue, so that you don't have to keep track of good posts that you want to tip later. 

Summarising this now, I think that it is a problem when the reward systems become too important for the writing process.

On the other hand, the reward systems do seem to also inspire people to write more, which is undoubtedly a good thing. Finding the balance between causing an inspirational driving force  and an incitement for quantitative overproduction   is definitely an important issue for both sites, and unfortunately I don't have any answer to this dilemma.

Personally, I try not to write anything, if I don't have anything to say, and then if someone likes it and tips it, I get the more happy. It won't get me rich in any way, but i think my articles may be worth reading. What I can say is that I find that the reward system does make it easier to start on an article, than on my previous blogging sites. I am not sure about why, but there must be some subconscious reasons for it, I think.

So, if you like this, let me know in whatever way you prefer. And if you don't like it, please tell me anyway.

Crossposted (slightly altered) on uptrennd.