Splinterlands is built on Hive, and getting involved with Hive is a great way for new (and old) Splinterlands players to engage with the community, find other cool apps and services on Hive, and earn a little Hive by producing high quality content.
In this post I'll talk about the basics for getting started with content creation on Hive, which will let you earn some crypto that you can put back into the game (or take out if you want!).
1. Make sure you have your Hive keys and Hive Keychain set up
First thing you want to make sure before you start exploring the Hive ecosystem is that you have your Hive keys backed up and Hive Keychain set up on your machine. These are steps you will do after getting your Summoner's Spellbook.
Hive Keys
When you buy a Spellbook on Splinterlands, you automatically get a Hive account. After that, you should request your keys from Splinterlands and back those up. The support team has a great article that describes what each key does and how to store them and use them: https://support.splinterlands.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414914065940-Hive-Keys
In a nutshell, your keys are the equivalent of a seed phrase on other blockchains. But on Hive, you have different keys that give different authority. This has many benefits, one of them being that you can use lower-authority keys for less sensitive things (e.g. posting a comment on a blog) without requiring your most important keys (which give access to your funds).
Hive Keychain
The next thing you'll want to do is set up Hive Keychain. Here's another great article from the support team that explains how to set that up: https://support.splinterlands.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412500061588-Hive-Keychain-Installation-and-Usage
Hive Keychain is your Hive wallet, and it lets you interact with all your Hive apps (including Splinterlands). It's fast and lightweight and has a very simple user interface.
2. Learn the basics of content creation on Hive
There's a lot to it but I'll keep it simple in this post: one of the core parts of Hive is a massive decentralized social network where people can publish content on the Hive blockchain, and holders of $HIVE (with the staked or "powered up" Hive called "Hive Power" or "HP" for short) can then upvote (or downvote) content. Upvotes from big HP holders means you can earn from your content.
In the screenshot below, you can see some of my recent posts. The number on the bottom right of each post shows the payouts based on the upvotes received and is denominated in US dollars. 50% of that goes to you, and the other 50% goes to the people who "curate" (upvote) your content. This encourages you to write good content, and also encourages you to go curate other people's good content.
By default when you write a post, half of your earnings come in HBD (Hive Backed Dollars, a stablecoin pegged to the USD) and the other half comes in powered up Hive (i.e. "HP"). I recommend keeping it that way, and keeping your HP powered up so you can build your Hive presence over time. As for the HBD, I recommend swapping it to DEC and buying stuff in Splinterlands!!
Before posting your own content, I also recommend spending a little time looking at a few different authors' content to get a sense of what people expect and what curators will upvote. Here are a few I recommend taking a look at:
- Mine ( https://peakd.com/@bravetofu ): My focus is entirely on Splinterlands at the moment, and I work hard to create quality content that isn't repetitive, that is fun, and that helps new & old Splinterlands players.
- @azircon ( https://peakd.com/@azircon ): Azircon is a data geek (it's a compliment AZ - I consider myself one as well), a provocateur (another compliment!) and a Hive & Splinterlands OG. His content covers a lot of ground with a particular emphasis on Hive.
- We're All Dead" 😶)@tarazkp ( https://peakd.com/@tarazkp ): Taraz puts out 1-2 posts a day and focuses on a lots of different topics. Every post is headlined by a beautiful image and he goes into very thought-providing ideas (just check out his latest post, "
3. Write your first post
Once you have an idea of what's out there, it's time to write your first post. There are many different "front ends" for blogging on Hive, but my favorite is @peakd https://peakd.com/.
Since this guide is about Hive for SPLINTERLANDS players, my recommendation is for you to write Splinterlands content. However, it's absolutely not the only type of content you can or should write. If you're going to write about other topics, I encourage you to find communities on Hive that talk about the topics you're interested in and engage with them so you can build connections with people who have similar interests.
When it comes to Splinterlands content, there are plenty of ways you can take it. If you're a new player, I would suggest documentation your onboarding experience and your progress. Write down the stuff you feel is useful and that you think other new players should know. Give your take on what are the powerful cards in the early game, or your point of view on improvements that should be made. Learn about some of the various tokens we have, including SPS of course, and share your thoughts. Bring analogies from other games you've played (web3 or not) and how Splinterlands could adapt those ideas.
Here are a few more practical tips:
- Don't be repetitive: Even good content, if done over and over, will start to bore readers and curators. I overdid it on tier lists and saw there was tier list fatigue, so I moved on to other topics. Don't put out the same content every time.
- Use AI, but do it right: Using AI for cover images (great way to stand out), or in some cases for your core content, can be a great idea. However, I'd recommend against using AI to write for you (it's pretty easy to tell...) and as for images make sure you make it clear to your audience they're AI generated. If you use AI in a "lazy" way it'll be obvious, however if you use AI as a foundation and build on top of it, it can give beautiful results.
- Consider being provocative: If you engage your readers and make them want to comment, or suggest things that are out-of-the-box, or if you hit a nerve, you're more likely to get noticed and curated. AZ does this best 😅
- Reply to every comment: Engage with everyone who engages with you. Get them coming back. In fact, go engage on other people's posts as well. Build connections the old-school way, by going and talking to people.
4. Participate in Splinterlands weekly challenges
The Splinterlands team puts out various challenges each week focused on different things, such as community engagement, art, and social media. You can find all their contests on https://peakd.com/@splinterlands. You can submit your content on any of these and, if your content is good, you may get curated by the team. Doing so can earn you quite a few rewards, but it only works if you produce GOOD content. If it's clear you're just quickly cranking something out just to check the box, you won't (or shouldn't) get curated. Plenty of people do these challenges (you can check in the SPL Community on Hive here: https://peakd.com/c/hive-13323/created ) and you can see which ones get the most rewards to get inspiration.
If you do all of the above, you should be able to fairly easily get 10 HBD (or more!) each week just writing content. And if you like Splinterlands, you'll put that 10 HBD into the game to further your account there!
I hope this post was useful and that you too will get involved with Hive and start producing lots of great content for us. If you're new, be sure to tag me in your posts so I can come check them out!
One thing I like to add after posting the first blogpost, is engagement. The way hive defines engagement is as follows:
Finally treat hive as a journal or your personal blog. Explore a hobby. If you use it well it can be well beyond Splinterlands.
Nice comment ;)
All good tips, thanks AZ. Btw I think like many things where there's a monetary incentive involved, people sometimes forget the basics. Kind of like how in Splinterlands sometimes people forget to enjoy the actual game because they're too focused on whether or not they're earning. And the funny thing is that on something like a blog, the more you just focus on creating good content on stuff you love (versus focusing on earnings) the more likely you are to earn.
I wrote this somewhere else:
join hive, earn crypto
is a terrible campaign! It never worked for the last 8 years and it will not work.
The campaign should be:
join hive, learn crypto, explore an interest
I always say at least thank you even if comment is just thumbs up emoji or a few words like ,,nice post''. In the past I used to even upvote every comment I got. Only recently I became more selective about what I upvote.
Yeah I've recently started getting a little more selective as well. I enjoy the small comments more than nothing at all, but definitely like when people take the time to provide a thoughtful comment (shows they actually read at least part of the content!).
Long term I think it should also be a goal for larger parts of the Splinterlands community to be more invested in Hive as well. At the very least that means doing some 100% powered up posts, or swapping HBD to Hive and powering up that from time to time.
At the moment, we rely a lot on the curators and contests, and I cant help but feel that it promotes extraction. If more community members have a vote with some value, and of course used that vote on content that they like, I like to think that it would lead to better content and more active engagement here, which would in turn be better for Splinterlands too.
+1 to @seattlea's request for AI cover image guide. You seem to be a master on that. I would love to learn.
Yep I totally agree with this, and that's the reason I recently bought 30k Hive and plan to add more over time. However I do think it's ok for people to start off earning before they decide to commit. I got to a point where I can see myself on Hive long-term, but it's a hard ask for someone who's new to both Splinterlands and Hive to commit to both early on. Once they figure out the incentive structure is in their best interest, and they start forming relationships in the community, I'm hoping that long-term mindset will come along as well.
Good guide that covers the basics of Hive for the new people. It might be interesting to do a guide on how to do advanced prompts for AI cover images. I found it takes me like 10+ attempts to get exactly what I want for those.
Oh that's a good call! I would love to share how I do it. I'll file it in the backlog (have so many things I want to write about!).
Tofu got you!
This kind of post are useful, I wish hive had some sort of "sticky" post people saw the moment they enter the ecosystem, like forums do.
I still remember when I joined hive I though people only earn hive for posting wich was at the time super low in price so I couldnt really understand what all the fuzz was about.
It took me a year or 2 to understand the stuff you explain in this post without any guidance.
Yeah this is a very good point. It's true about all types of content on Hive. The sheer magnitude/volume of Splinterlands content on Hive is astounding, but it's all over the place. I recently posted tons of tier lists and decided I needed a link tree for all of them (and I'll keep going back and updating that link tree). Maybe that's part of the solution, but it's very manual. Some kind of organizational principles will be needed at some point.
I have to say, Mr. Tofu, sir.. I always hope I see a new post from you every time I scroll through and read articles on PeakD. Your posts are very useful and entertaining. Thank you for sharing so much.
Warms my heart man! I write this stuff hoping it gets used, and am always excited to come in and see if there are comments. Glad you enjoy it :)
Great post and a nice introduction to using hive, I am going to follow your advice on using the splinterlands weekly challenges to prompt some articles and agree with other comments regarding a guide on creating banners for articles, it would be great to get some idea of the process
!BBH
Yep, you absolutely should. As for the guide on banners, that's on my list :)
I usually recommend the first post to be an introduction post. One that will let the community know about the author to help build connections in Hive. If possible, should also include a stablished social media to avoid any problems with HW specially if they want to post on other communities.
Yeah as a first post it makes sense. I do wonder whether there'd be enough attention from curators to read through all these intro posts however. Which reminds me of another tip I should've added, which is that in general it's good to be brief (i.e. not add too much fluff/words that don't add meaningful value).
Good blog.
I just want to add, that you can also introduce yourself with your first blog. Many people do this and use the #introduceyourself hashtag for this.
Oh, I didn't know that. Too late :-D But a good idea! I'll check that hashtag.
I think you can do this, even if it's not your first post. :)
Dang, should've done it with my second more personal post, then :-D the third it'll be!
Good call, I forgot about that. Thanks @flummi97!
Thank you for this post, as always, and also for the upvote on mine that's somewhat similar topic - always feels good to get an upvote from the big guys 🙃
About the repetitive content - that's something that I'm recently facing. Another battle analysis. Another EOS-Reward post. Another Strategy Guide. Since I AZ is kind of guiding me a little, I'm questioning the worth of those. What is your opinion - Does it help to do those kind of "Look-at-my-dopamine-rush"-Posts on X and other platforms in order to give SPL more exposure, or is it counter-productive as it is repetitive within our own SPL-Community?
Some of them are good. I do read a couple here and there and some have nice images, funny comments, or simply highlight a very cool battle or a very interesting lineup. BUT the problem is there are so many mediocre ones that they drown out the good ones in my opinion. I think by and large they should add value but since they're all over the place and there are no organizational principles it makes it very hard to see what's uniquely adding value vs what's just repeat copy-pasta.
When I do battle-focused posts, I try to focus on one element (e.g. one summoner or one card) and give many examples without storytelling one single battle or whatever. Like my Nidhoggr one recently showcased 8 battles in the Blast ruleset, showing how Nid's great at those. Didn't get a ton of engagement, but I do feel it's useful if someone's wondering whether or not Nid is valuable or trying to figure out how to use him.
That's a good idea. By coincidence, I just made a post that is more like that, since it was about strategies against the Lorkus + Barashkukor combo, one that I find incredibly difficult to beat.
The thing is that I only have a certain amount of battles in my history - is there an archive for ones' battles somewhere?
I have to have an idea for an article, and then collect battles one by one in order to get enough for a post.
I do like the "round by round" storytelling, but that might be more exciting to write than to read... I'll look up some posts from others and see how it is for me :-D
Cool, I'll go check out your post :)
Tbh I'm not sure how to get a full battle history or whether that's possible. Worth asking in the tavern to see if there's a tool for that.
Will do that, thank you!
Oh, and by the way - thank you SO much for tagging Taraz. Such an amazing Blog! That was what I was looking for here. Your blog is amazing for SPL, Azircon is really cool for all those statistics and controversity, and Taraz was the real-world-philosphy-blog that I was still looking for. Huge thanks.
Your last link of the post to the Splinterlands community does not work for me, I tried it a couple of times.
Same thing with these links, the one on the left works but the one with the red line does not work.
Thank you for catching that!! Seems the markup doesn't like parentheses at the end of those links and was including that. Fixed and now I know to be more careful in the future, thanks!
You're welcome!
A basic explanation, which can help many, could help by noting that if you are new to publishing you should try to keep the KE stable to be able to receive good votes from the curators, otherwise success.
Yep good call. I love the focus on KE recently. Kudos to AZ on that :)
👍
Nice post.I think that it is in the best interest of every splinterlands player to also participate in and be active in Hive as well. I like people here more than I like in real life. At times writing a post can be as fun as playing games. And rewards add up over time. I been here for 7+ years and have no intention of stopping any time soon.
It's funny how engaging with other humans can be a game in and of itself, right?
amazing content !! this kind of post is very useful to , giving us detailed information ,specially for a new b like me on this platform
Glad you found it helpful!
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Thanks for sharing! - @azircon
