How are Hivers doing with the length of their posts? Is posts length increased or decreased? What is the average length of a post on Hive? How many words in a post are enough? Are longer post rewarded more on Hive?
Let’s take a look at the data for post length and payouts based on this.
Here we will be looking at the number of characters and words per post, what is the average and how does the daily numbers fluctuate. Then we will be taking a look at the payouts for the posts according to their length and categorize them.
The period that is analyzed here is 2020-2024.
Total Number of Posts
First an overall look at the number of posts per day in the period. These are post only, comments not included. Here is the chart.
The number of posts per day has increased towards 2022, reaching 5k at ATH, and then dropped in 2022 to around 3k post per day where it has been almost stable for more than a year now.
Total Number of Characters in Posts
Here is a chart for the daily number of characters from posts.
The blockchain has a data of body length, or number of characters per post. When we sum those up, on a daily level we get the above. This chart follows the post chart trend. The numbers of characters per day is between 10M to 12M per day.
The number of characters by itself doesn’t tell us much.
Number of Words per Post
Here is the chart.
From here we can notice that the number of words per posts has been steadily increasing in the period. It has started to around 500 words per posts on average in 2020, and grew towards 800 words per posts in 2023. In 2024 we have seen a small drop and somewhat stabilization around the 800 words per posts.
It’s quite amazing to see that the average length of posts has been growing trough the years.
As mentioned above, the blockchain only has data for number of characters per post, not a word count. I have converted the numbers of characters in words based on an average of 5 characters per word. Its not a 100% exact number but close enough.
Note that videos are usually short on characters, that doesn’t represent their length.
Posts Length and Payouts
If we categorize the number of posts according to their word count, we get this chart. This is data for May 2024.
We can see here that most of the post are shorter and belong in the 500 words or less, category. As the post length increases, the number of posts is getting smaller. But interesting that the last category, more than 2500 words has just a bit more post than the previous one 2k to 2.5k words in a post.
What About the Payouts?
Are longer posts getting rewarder more than short posts?
Here is the chart for payouts according to posts word count in the last 30 days.
We can se quite a even position when it comes to payouts for the top three categories. Posts above 1500 words are on average getting $10 or slightly more. Then comes the posts between 1k to 1.5k words with just below $10.
The short posts, under 500 words have the smallest average payouts with $2 per post.
The table looks like this.
| Words per Post | Number of Posts | Average Earning [$] |
|---|---|---|
| < 500 | 37,439 | 2.34 |
| 500-1000 | 22,806 | 5.87 |
| 1000-1500 | 10,256 | 8.79 |
| 2500 + | 2,739 | 9.89 |
| 1500-2000 | 5,105 | 10.13 |
| 2000-2500 | 2,463 | 10.83 |
The posts under 500 words on average earn $2 and the posts with 1500+ words earn on average $10.
Longer post obviously earn more.
But as we can see the post from 1k to 1.5k words are very close in the earning to the longer posts and they are the most efficient in terms of earnings per word.
Who is Making the Longest Posts?
Here is the chart for authors who are making the longer posts from the start of 2024.
The @swc-curation account is on the top here with a post with 12k words. It’s a reporting account that is dual lingual so it puts in a lot of characters.
@curangel is on the second spot with a 11k words per post. They make a compilation post from the curated post.
@jacekw, an account that posts long for posts with data on Splinterlands.
All the best
@dalz
Interesting data ! I've found that posts that are too long attract votes from established friends but not new readers. This suggests that they are getting automatic votes or not being read fully. With really short posts (which I don't do many of) it's totally random, depending on whether curation trails pick them up.
An interesting statistic, although I've got no idea whether it's possible to get the data, would be to look at payouts compared to the number of images in a post (allowing for the caveat that some images are just section dividers, "fluff" banners etc).
Not sure, need to take a deeper look is it possible
Is micro blogging included in this data? Inleo Threads?
No, posts only
Then it's a bit sad to see les and les posts on Hive.
Of course it's great to see that the longer the posts the better the rewards as it should be this way cause good content should we rewarded more. Personal opinion.
Could you maybe create a timeline where you also show witch dapp or project was launched on Hive to maybe understand if those had any effect on the grouwth of shorter posts? For example if you can add when Liketu was launched, I am sure you can see the growth of shorter posts there.
I use GA and i usually add a note when I change things on the website or add new thing so I can see if it had any effect.
It is good to see longet posts grow on Hive and I am curious if ENG+ESP languages in one post had any effect on that.
Wow my good friend Dalz, It's fascinating how post length impacts payouts on Hive. Longer posts seem to earn more, but finding a balance is probably the key. Personally, I find mid-length posts to be the sweet spot it's usually supposed to be detailed enough to add value without being overwhelming
I'm not sure if length is important after one hits 2k words per post, except in the case of a compilation for curation or stats post? I think if it's a fictional work, diary, travel adventure, or other post meant for reading the entire thing it's good to split it into parts or chapters and post one a day, week, etc
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
I would like to ask how it is with the number of characters or words. Does the photo somehow count towards the number of characters or words, or is it just the characters and words of the written text. I often see posts where there is not much written text, yet they have a relatively high rating.
Text only
Thanks
Posts that are too long bore the reader. The market trend is more tic toc and less YouTube.
I tend to be on that low end of 750 -1.000 with a rare occurrence of over 1,000 lol Under 500 though seems kind of crazy for a article.
Excellent report about Hive
Appreciate the work. I wouldn't have guessed that. Cheers.
Thanks for the stats. I’d check the authors with the longest posts to at least see how many words they write
Our knowledge has increased a lot after your post, we didn't know before how people are posting and how many words they are writing. I have been posting for the last two and half years. I want to write 1000 words, but as it has become known that writing 1500 words is being given more importance, I will now try to write my post in 1500 words.
It is interesting to see the earnings relative to the length of the post. I usually try to get my posts to around 1k words, and I think I am getting something similar to the data. The 2k-2.5k is intriguing though. Is that the reason why a lot of posts have dual languages, to take advantage of this?
The data is very useful. I was intrigued by the word count in the posts. It is very difficult to publish a post of more than 10 thousand words.
Very nice stats! Well, it only makes sense that longer posts should earn more as it should be. Though there are short posts which are very good and helpful as well. Thanks for sharing it with us.
As always very interesting data...
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Excellent information based on statistics Dalz.
The Curation and Statistics Reports of the SWC curator account (@swc-curation) reflect the activity of our community (SWC) in terms of publishing original and quality content in a week (7 days). The Curation Report compiles the content that all users share on SWC and is intended to reflect the number of users posting to our community. The Statistics Report is specifically related to content posted on SWC by athletes. The statistics generate a Membership for each athlete according to the number of posts in a week. We don´t have any curation trail that generates automatic votes for us.
Does this take into account edits made to older posts outside the rewards window? If I go back and add 300 words to a post that was originally 500 words when published, will it show up as 800 words in this statistic?
When you edit a post its basicly creating a new post and overwriting the link to the older one. So it counts two times, onec a 500 words,and secont time a 800 words.
I think nowadays people are posting a bit more often than before
Seeing how Hive postings have become longer over time is intriguing. Though postings between 1000 and 1500 words have the highest benefits per word, longer posts do obviously provide more awards.
Thank you for giving us this comprehensive details
The average post length on Hive has increased steadily over time, reaching over 800 words in 2023. entries with more than 1500 words often yield $10 or more, with longer entries typically earning more. Posts of 1,000–1.5, 000 words provide the most efficient revenue per word. Outstanding analysis of the data!