I want to make one thing clear, in case that may have come across as misleading: I don't understand the alleged problem between @bdvoter and @themarkymark in any depth and that's why I don't want to imply anyone is exploiting a system. So I apologize if that came across wrong.
And it's not really about the rewards. The time I spend publishing my blogs, I could have a part-time job and I would earn a lot more.
My point is rather that you should perhaps leave a short explanation if you get such a big downvote, because a downvote on Hive is rather “unusual” in my opinion. As the author of the blog, you think about what you might have done wrong. I think this scares off new users in particular.