I have been on Publish0x since January of 2020. I got a ad for this website called Publish0x and you could earn crypto for just reading articles each day. I figured why not and I setup an account. It was shortly after that (maybe a few days) that I realized you could apply to become an author. I was a little nervous but as someone who loves to write and loves to type on a keyboard I figured it would be perfect. I never had a blog before, I was new to crypto world in a sense and it was nerve racking.
But I didn't let that stop me. I applied to be an author and I would like to say I waited patiently but I was a wreck constantly checking my e-mail. I don't know why but I felt like I was being judged on whether or not they would like what I had to write. Needless to say about 24 hours later I was approved as an author and I went on to write articles here.
I have seen people's comments here and on Noise.cash about wanting to be an author on Publish0x but not sure if they should or not. I always tell whomever it is to just go for it. It's a risk free adventure and there is a huge possible upside with being able to get more tips! Today I wanted to lay out some things that I have learned while writing on Publish0x over the last 16 months. If you are a fellow author and I missed anything please feel free to leave it in the comments.
1) Just sit down and write
2) Proof read everything
3) Write what you are passionate about
4) There will be bullies
5) Don't be boring
6) Consistency is king
7) Don't post shit
8) What can you make as an author
9) Use the tools available
10) Know the rules
1) Just sit down and write
I almost feel like people are so nervous to write that they don't even start. You can't be an author if you don't write articles. Just sit down at your computer and open up Microsoft Word (or OpenOffice - 3rd party Word Processor) and start writing. Not everything you write will be an article and that is okay. I start articles all the time that I end up deleting because I know they wouldn't make for a good article that people would want to read.
You need to figure out your writing patterns and what type of author you are. Are you going to write things from a silly goofy perspective, like everything will be told as a story in the 3rd person. Or are you going to write things from a 1st person perspective. You can do both but you need to have a clear mindset going into your articles.
What I did when I first started was use OneNote and wrote down topics that I wanted to write about. Then I would see if I could break those topics up into smaller sub topics.
For example I had something like this:
- Brave Browser
- Sliver.TV
- Crypto Mining
I think wrote an article about my experience so far with the Brave Browser. I wrote a guide to what Sliver.tv was and how to earn TFUEL. I think broke Crypto Mining into smaller categories and wrote 1 article for Electroneum and 1 article for LynxChain. I then branched out and started writing articles about different crypto games. I didn't fully find my voice until I wrote a few articles and got the hang of the community.
2) Proof Read Everything
You are going to screw up. You are going to use improper grammer some times. How many of you caught that I just spelled "grammar" wrong in the last sentence? Sure modern browsers and websites have spell check, but not all have Grammar-Check's. There was a time when someone commented on a article I wrote saying that I started too many sentences with the word "So". He then went into detail as to why it was improper and the use cases for it. It was informative and I knew he was right and I have been cautious of starting a sentence with 'so' every since unless it was necessary.
This just may be a me thing but I can't stand when people write articles and it appears as if they never proof read it. When a article has numerous errors it's hard to follow and stay attentive to the message of the article. I get lost in all the grammatical errors. Now I am a white, middle class, male, US citizen. I understand my schooling is different than a lot of people possibly writing on Publish0x. Some people who write here are not native English speakers. So it is harder for them. I am not so much talking about them as I am of native English speakers.
There are also times when I am reading a article and it sounds like the 1st half of the article was written at a different time then the 2nd half because they had different flows to the writing style. Sometimes your style changes on the day and that is okay but if you are writing a article it needs to match up or it is too distracting.
3) Write what you are passionate about
Don't just publish articles in the hope of getting tips. If you do then more often than not you won't get much of any. Post about things you care about. It is amazing how your writing style can change when you care about what you are talking about. If you love to garden then start a gardening blog of sorts here and post updates and pictures and guides. I know this is a crypto-website-blogger-thing. That being said I have seen posts about people who have a bee hive get a lot of views and tips. I have seen articles about math helpful tricks and tips blow up. Anything can survive on Publish0x but only if they content is good. If you never played the drums in your life and you write a guide to how to play drums I can almost guarantee it will suck.
If you love Blockchain gaming then write about your experiences with different ones. If you love mining then write about that. If you love technology then write about that. If you love all those things (like me) then write about all of them. This isn't some Medium/Tumbler blog that has to be about 1 thing. Write what you want to write about. Create good content and you will be rewarded.
Do not expect to get 1,000 followers over night. At the time of this writing, 16 months after I joined, I am at 975 followers. And honestly 200 of those were in the last month. It will take time to gain a following. But if you want to gain more attention and views then write quality articles and post meaningful comments.
The one exception I will make for #3 is when it comes to contests here at Publish0x. Every so often Igor will post a writing contest. It is something like $1,000 in prizes for the best articles about a certain topic. I have won some prizes from the writing contests. Not all of them I was passionate about. But in the same breath I didn't know alot about the topic until I researched it for the writing contest. You learn things too in the process. There was a writing contest about Presearch. I heard of it but never really gave it the time of day. Then I started to research it for the contest and I learned to really like it. And I ended up winning 2nd place in that contest and wining $60 for my article (I think or maybe it was $50). It's hard to tell now because the amount of ETH I won has raised in value since
4) There will be bullies
I remember the second article I ever posted on Publish0x because of the comments.
https://www.publish0x.com/earning-that-crypto/brave-browser-6-month-review-xmxxgj
I was using Brave Browser for a while (thanks to Coinbase Earn I heard of BAT earlier) and I saw that there were a lot of articles doing really well on Publish0x about Brave. So I wanted to get in on the action. I wrote a 6 month review of my experience with the browser. It did okay initially in terms of view and tips. Now it has 1,676 views and has earned $12.13 in tips but that is not accurate to what I earned at the time. That is today prices for the crypto I earned a year ago.
But either the same day it posted or the day after someone commented pretty negatively to my article. I will post the comments here but you can go to the article and see them yourself if you want.
I don't know why but this guy "compunerd_nb" didn't believe me and didn't like my article and just seemed like he wanted to fight. I was new to writing on Publish0x and it caught me off guard. I knew the internet is full of trolls and bullies so I tried to take it in stride and stand my ground without being rude or mean.
I went back to that person's account when writing this article and saw that those where the only comments they ever made on Publish0x.
Just because someone is rude or mean doesn't mean you have to take it personally. There are mean people out there who will comment to get you riled up. Be yourself and brush off any hate. But don't brush off critique if they are factual. I always have believed you can learn the most from talking to people who disagree with you. If we only talked to people who think like us and believe what we believe then this world would suck.
Haters goin' Hate!
5) Don't be boring
No one wants to read boring articles. Full Stop!
You need to bring life to your words. You can do that a few ways. If you are writing a lot of text in a article then change things up with a few pictures or screenshots. But please don't just post a crap ton of meme's in your article if they are not called for. Posting too much of that can turn people off. Be professional but be fun. Have a personality that the readers can see when reading your articles. Some people will follow you for your content. While others will follow you for your personality.
You need to find your rhythm and go with it. Maybe super dry humor and articles are your thing and there is probably people out there that will appreciate it and follow you for it.
6) Consistency is King
This one kind of goes hand in hand with #5. If you are posting blockchain gaming articles left and right and then 4 months later you post nothing but Beanie Babies review articles then well you will probably loose followers and not get as many tips. That isn't to say you can't post new things but if you are going to transition to other topics and you have a decent following already you need to do it slowly and meticulously.
Think to yourself this, "Why are my followers following me?". If you post funny articles about a range of topics then you can get away easily with posting funny articles about different types of carpet. Put time into what you are writing and put time into what you are going to write.
7) Don't post shit
I grew up in a religious home where cursing wasn't an option. However though like any teenager I knew how to cuss like the best of them. I just learned at a young age to have a filter. You need that filter here online as well. If you are cussing left and right and using a slimmed down vocabulary then automatically you are going to be judged a certain way and that will reflect on your views and tips.
I have learned that when I curse I curse to make a point and that's it. The saying goes something like this:
You can use words like frick, crap, asshole (oh wait no not that one) meany-head, rude person, pain in the butt, shoot, hogwash. Expand your vocabulary even if it is only to not curse in every article or every sentence.
It goes beyond swearing to. Don't just post a article to post a article. Post an article because it has a purpose. Post an article to inform people or to educate people to create a discussion.
8) What can you make as an author
Not a lot of people talk about this because it's all hush hush. Some people may give broad monetary values to what they earn and some people may just straight up lie about it. I can tell you this though. You will make more as an author on Publish0x then just a reader.
I will try to give you some perspective from someone who has been posting semi constantly for the past 16 months. This month is by far my best month ever on Publish0x so take that into account when going through these screenshots.
Here are the most recent articles I posted:
Here are articles from 2 months ago or so. You can see that most articles I was earning $0.30 to $0.50 in tips. I was getting a few hundred views per article. Obviously the one article in this screenshot is the Presearch one with average views and HUGE earning but that was a writing competition article. You can also see even if you get thousands of views your tips may not correlate to it.
Here you can see my earning from the month of May so far and my total Ethereum, Ampleforth and iFARM I have earned. The tipping tokens rotate from time to time so you won't see how much BAT I earned or DAI for example.
The nice thing too is that you can never stop earning tips from previous articles. Here you can see the 1st article I published in January of 2020. It has gotten 3,353 views and $21.40 in tips from every tipping token that we had in the past 16 months.
I am still getting about 100 views a month to that article that is outdated now but another article I have written since.
9) Use the tools available
There are so many good 3rd party software's out there that I would highly suggest you use. Here are a few that I recommend.
- GIMP https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
It is a free image editing software like Photoshop
- Greenshot https://getgreenshot.org/downloads/
This is a screenshot software and way better then Windows built in one.
- OpenOffice https://www.openoffice.org/download/
If you don't have a Microsoft Office suite then you can use this 3rd party solution which is almost as good
Also don't forget that in the writing section you can add CoinGecko widgets for the prices of any cryptocurrency you are talking about in an article. So say I wanted to let me know the price of Ethereum because I am talking about Ethereum.
That little guy is your friend. Click on him then select "Coin Ticker Widget" and search for Ethereum under "Coin ID" and click on "insert into editor" at the bottom
And you will get this guy below!
10) Know the rules
By default you as an author can post 2 articles in a 24 hours period. You can ask the Publish0x team to increase that but you will need to explain why you want it and probably have a decent track record of articles to back it up that you are not posting spam all the time. I personally only ever got hit with this twice in 16 months and it shouldn't be an issue for you.
Each person can only tip a author once every 24 hours. So say you have 100 followers that like and comment and tip you on every article you write. If you post 2 articles in 1 day then those 100 people will only be able to tip you once. However if you space your articles out so no more than one a day then all 100 followers can tip you once a day. You earn more and they earn more. Obviously yes they could come back to your article the next day and tip it but I wouldn't recommend posting more than 1 article a day.
Don't try to figure out how to get your article to the "Popular" page on Publish0x. I am 16 months into that journey and I haven't made any strides in that department. I will say thought I have been lucky enough to get a few articles on the top spot and it feels good
There is also an ongoing debate as to what is the best time to post articles on Publish0x. This one I have found is a tricky one to answer because it depends on who is reading your articles. If your followers are mostly in the US well then the time to post to get the most views would be different if most of your viewers or from Europe. You know time zones and all. You will need to figure this one out yourself. Keep in mind though just because you post 1 article at 8am and then another at 8pm and the 8am does better doesn't mean much. Your 8pm article could have been crap and that's why it didn't do well.
There is so much more I could write about but I wanted to not bore you guys while also giving a lot of detailed explanations at the same time. I hope this article helps some of you to finally become Publish0x authors and start writing articles here.
Oh yeah and a pet peeve of mine is don't post a bunch of crap at the bottom of the article, like your wallet address for additional tips. 1 address fine but posting 20 lines of links to get more seems desperate. Link to 1 or two other of your articles is cool by me.
OH the most important tip I can give you. BE HONEST if you are posting a referral link. What I do is post my referral link and stating it as such then posting a link to the same website without my referral link. Do now try to trick your viewers to click a referral link. It is stupid simple to spot and if you are being sneaky then I won't tip you and I won't use your referral link. If you are upfront and honest then I will use your link. K? Thanks! 👍
