English Version:
Intro
Almost two months ago we shared a Guide for illustrators on the @creary network/platform, [you can read it here](https://peakd.com/hive-148441/@eddiespino/ultimate-guide-to-creary-or-guia-definitiva-para-creary). This time we want to share a complete guide to help illustrators become successful #hivers. This guide will be targeted towards brand new users who know nothing about the Hive Blockchain but it will also have useful tips for already onboarded users. We also want to make this special guide for illustrators because that's the niche that we have been working on, especially with my lovely wife's account @grisvisa. **So let's start!**.
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## What is Hive?
Hive is a Social Blockchain that uses the advantages of the Web 3.0 and is built to fight censorship. On Hive you can earn cryptocurrency by posting, commenting, and voting content. Every like has value and it represents a great option for any content creator to monetize their articles, photos, videos, vlogs, illustrations, and any type of original material. Hive has a rewarding system where likes can turn into real money. It sounds crazy, but it's true! But like everything worthwhile, it is not easy to start and it can be very confusing, so that's why we have prepared this guide.
### For more information about Hive visit: https://hive.io/
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## Create a Hive Account
The first obvious step is to create your own immutable Hive Account. **Good news!** It is free and now we have a great option to achieve this step using @hiveonboard.
- Step #1 go to: [hiveonboard.com](https://peakd.com/register?ref=eddiespino)
- Choose your username and *read* and agree to the *terms of service*.
- Back up your account information. Keeping your keys safe is very important.
- Verify your account through the SMS code. This code can take up to five minutes to be sent to your phone, so be patient.
- And there you go! Your account is ready!
*Note: Hive is a decentralized Fork of Steem created by the community. If you already have a Steem account that was created before March 20, 2020, you also have a ready to use Hive account, you can log in with the same information (username and passwords/keys). You should even have the same balance.*
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## What are HIVE, HBD, and HivePower?
Hive is the name of the Blockchain, but it is also the name of the coin or token. Just like [Bitcoin - BTC](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin), [Ethereum - ETH ](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum), [Litecoin - LTC](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/litecoin) or [Ripple - XRP](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/xrp), Hive is also cryptocurrency that can be traded on many exchanges. [HIVE](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/hive) is the main coin and it can be transferred to any user in a matter of seconds and without fees just like [STEEM](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/steem). HIVE tokens can be converted into HivePower. This is known as a PowerUp. When a user has a lot of HivePower they can vote and add value to the post and comments of other people. Think of HivePower as your influence inside the platform, like bonds on a company that let you own part of the stake of the whole platform.
The bigger HivePower, the bigger the vote. Hive Power can be converted back to Hive with an action called PowerDown. This action takes 13 weeks to be completed and each week the users will receive a 1/13 payment. Having a lot of HivePower can also help you gain curation rewards for voting content. It’s a great way to earn passive income.
*Note:* Votes are not unlimited. Every time you give a vote to someone it loses some power. *For example*: If you have a vote value of $1.00 (you would need a considerable amount of HivePower for that) and it's fully recharged every time you vote your VotingPower "mana bar" will decrease by 2%. If you gave 10 consecutive votes, your vote value would now be $0.80. It takes about two hours to recover 2% of your voting power. If you want to keep your VP in good percentages it is recommended to give no more than ten 100% or full votes. Votes can also be regulated. You can give a 50% vote, 20%, 35% or whichever percentage you choose.
There are also **negative votes** or **downvotes**. These are applicable in posts that are committing plagiarism, have broken some kind of community rule, or when someone thinks the posts may be overvalued (in votes).
HBD or Hive Dollar is the third part of the Hive trio and its value should always be 1.00 USD. These coins are earned through posting and commenting. When a post is made and it receives votes, 50% goes to curators (HivePower holders), the other 50% goes to the author of the post. Half is earned in HivePower and the other half in HBD. Let's take an example, if someone made a post and through votes of various users it reached $10.00 the author would receive 2.50 HBD and about 7.5 HivePower with current prices. This may vary a lot depending on the prices of the coins. Follow these links to check the current price of [HIVE](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/hive) and [HBD](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/hive_dollar).
###### There is also an internal market where users can trade HIVE for HBD and vice-versa.
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## Logging into the Hive Network
The next step can also be a little complicated for new users. On Hive we have more than one frontend, we have [hive.blog](https://hive.blog/) and we also have[ PeakD.com](https://peakd.com/). I recommend @peakd over other options. In this part of the guide, I will teach you how to successfully log this frontend or interface.
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### Private Keys
You can find more information here: https://wallet.hive.blog/
First, you have to understand how your Hive keys work and the difference between them. Yes, in Hive we have more than one password and there is no simple way to recover it so please back up your keys safely. Keys have different levels of security, the posting keys only have permission to post, comment, and vote, while the active key lets you do all that and also do transfers and sign more complex transactions. The owner and master keys let you do more things like changing your password.
Go to https://peakd.com/@YOURUSERNAM/permissions to learn more about this and manage your keys. You can find this section while visiting your profile on PeakD.com going to Actions and clicking on *Keys & Permissions*. There you can also find *Edit Profile* to change your basic information like name, description and add a profile photo and cover image.
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##### Log in Options
To log into frontends like PeakD.com we have different options. The one that I recommend is *Hive Keychain*. For me it is the most simple and most useful. I understand that for some users it can be a little bit difficult at first but I'll give some quick tips:
- First download Hive Keychain for [Chrome/Brave](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hive-keychain/jcacnejopjdphbnjgfaaobbfafkihpep) or for [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hive-keychain/) browsers.
- Open the extension and add a password to unlock the Keychain, this password is generated by you.
- Add your account username and save your private keys, active, posting, and memo keys. You should have these keys on the .txt file that you backed up from the Hive Onboarding site.
- Now you are ready to sign in! Just go to [PeakD.com](https://peakd.com/) or [Hive.Blog](https://hive.blog/) and select log in with Hive Keychain, write your username (without the @) and you will be in!
If you use a different browser you can also use PeakLock and another option [HiveSigner](https://hivesigner.com/). These options also work on mobile devices.
If you are having trouble with any of these steps you can contact me on Discord: ```eddiespino#1698``` or on any of my [Social Media](https://linktr.ee/eddiespino).
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### Solving Resource Credits Issues
https://hiveblocks.com/
Using Hive is free, there is no need to invest in the beginning. When I first started I did not buy any coins until a few months in. But having said that, Hive spends *Resource Credits* with every operation. Think of them as magic points on a video game. Every time you act (comment, post, vote, transfers, or any transaction in the Blockchain) these points will be spent but they will be eventually recovered. The amount of Resource Credits or RCs that an account has is determined by their Hive Power. The more Hive Power or HP you have, the more available action you will have on the blockchain. This is to prevent spam and to demotivate abusers.
The problem comes when a new content creator starts commenting, voting, and posting articles. If they are very active they will run out of RCs very fast and will not be able to continue interacting with the chain. At 0 HP you only have few "magic points'' to use and to recover them could take a few days. That's when community leaders, users, and dApps come in. Any user with enough Hive Power can delegate to another user, this is like lending some power but the coins are still owned by the delegator. The delegatee will instantly increase the available RCs on the account and will be able to make a lot of transactions on the Blockchain that, of course, depend on the delegated HP.
If you are reading this, you are new to Hive or have too little HP and if you have had problems with RCs and want to start posting quality content I can help you with a small Hive Power delegation so you can have enough Resource Credits. I can only do this with a limited number of people, but I may be able to ask more users for help. This delegation will be active for three to four weeks until the user has earned its own HP. If I see that the delegation is not used, I will remove it to help someone else.
I believe that developers are working on a way to delegate just the Resource Credits and, in that case, HP delegation will not be necessary. Dapps like Hive Onboarding can use this tool to delegate RCs to new users when the accounts are created. It will be a huge improvement to the chain.
Send me a message if you would like to get a delegation from me. At the bottom of the post, you can find my contact information.
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### Introduce yourself successfully with the Hive Community
[Image Source](https://unsplash.com/photos/qs0im4pLYbE)
Now that you have your account and enough RCs to continue, my recommendation is that you create an intro post. There are several ways. You can make a video on YouTube and insert it into the post. You can also take a selfie holding a piece of paper with the date, your username, and the word HIVE. Of course, you can choose to remain anonymous and don't show your face or true name, it's up to you. You can talk about your illustrations, your work, and the type of content that you are going to share. Your identity can also be verified with your social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Behance, or if you have a personal website you can add as well a link to your Hive profile there.
What @grisvisa and I have done is to make an account on [Link.Tree](https://linktr.ee/). You can sign up for free with your Instagram account. Once you have it, you add all the relevant links there. Then on the website section of every social media, we add the link.tree URL. This helps your accounts to be verified.
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### https://linktr.ee/gris.visa
### https://linktr.ee/eddiespino
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**These are some good examples of good Introductions to Hive:**
https://peakd.com/trending/introduceyourself
### Follow these recommendations but be creative and authentic.
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##### Choosing the correct tags for your posts
For the intro post remember to use the correct tags, it is very important to do so. #introduceyourself is one of the main ones but not the only one. Tags are also known as topics and allow users to categorize their posts and reach bigger audiences. Every time you add a tag ask yourself if it is related to your post. The tags that Gris commonly uses for her illustration posts are #drawing, #illustration, #art, #arte, and some more. On my post I use #hive if I'm talking about the blockchain, #blog, #spanish if the post is in that language, #cervantes if I'm sharing my post in that community and other tags depending on the topic of my post. I invite you to check out the trending page and look for some of the most used tags. https://peakd.com/trending
*Tag abuse* is not recommended and can be a reason to earn a downvote. So be careful, make your due diligence about tags before posting. A common mistake that I see is that new users add tags that don’t have an audience or that don’t exist here on Hive. You can use up to 10 tags but it is recommended to use only 5 unless your posts cover many topics. Another good way is to check out Hive Communities: https://peakd.com/communities.
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### Communities
One very important thing for this guide is talking about Communities. On Hive we have all kinds of decentralized immutable communities, almost one for every topic, and anyone can create their community. For illustrators we some options here is a short list:
- The first option and the one that @grisvisa and I use the most is [OnChainArt Community](https://peakd.com/c/hive-156509/trending). This community is focused on visual art.
- The second one is [Sketchbook Community](https://peakd.com/c/hive-174301/trending). This also a great option to share your illustrations posts.
- The third one is not specifically for illustration but it is a great place to make posts and a very active community. It is called [OCD Community](https://peakd.com/c/hive-174578/created) and it is focused on original content.
- If your content is only in Spanish or if you are sharing other types of work I recommend you post in the fourth option. [GEMS Community](https://peakd.com/c/hive-148441/created). This one is focused on the retention of new users, it's a great place to start if you are new. You could post your intro post here if you are not sharing an illustration.
- The fifth and last one is for people looking to share videos of their illustrations. [Threespeak Community](https://peakd.com/c/hive-181335/created) is a video platform created to fight the censorship that exists in other platforms such as YouTube.
Subscribe to these communities, engage with the users. Look at the post so you can have ideas on how to make and improve your posts. Also don't expect to have a lot of votes in the first posts. It can happen but keep your expectations low. Gaining Hive can take some time, people have to get to know you, but I can tell you something. If your work is good it will be easy to stand out and attract votes from big curators. It's not guaranteed, but this can happen, just keep posting your original content.
*Note:* Carefully read the rules of every community before engaging and posting. Most of these communities only accept posts in English, but if your post is in another language you can add it in the same post only. It is not acceptable to make the same post twice, even if they are in different languages, but you can always make a multilingual post.
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##### Giving a proper format to your blog posts
Posts on Hive can be written in HTML, Markdown, or a combination of both. I made a post recently about this subject and I also gave some tips for PeakD. Instead of repeating myself here, I invite you to read the posts: [PeakD Guide](https://peakd.com/hive-163399/@eddiespino/general-hive-tips-peakd-com).
If you are already familiar with HTML this will be a piece of cake. Markdown is similar but just uses different types of symbols or "codes". You can add images, videos, justify text and center images and text too. [Here is a basic MarkDown guide](https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet).
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### General Recommendations for Illustration Posts
We are almost done with this guide! One very important thing on Hive is to make your posts appealing to curators. The first thing they will see is the cover image, which is usually formatted like the one that I have on this post (the first image) and they will also read the title and description. A good cover image can make the difference between being voted or not. Their attention has to be caught so that they click on the post, read it and in the best-case scenario, they vote it, comment it, and share it.
One thing that works great on Art and Illustration posts is to add a process of your work on every post. Also, add a short or long description of the drawing and if you have YouTube videos of the process you can insert them too. Another really good option is to make a GIF and upload it like you were uploading an image. The only downside is that GIFs cannot be much bigger than 5MB, so keep that in mind. A great page to make GIFs out of images or videos is this one: https://ezgif.com/. On this page, there are several options to optimize GIFs, crop them, resize them, and more.
Another good practice is to always share your "normal" Social Media accounts so they can verify you are the owner of the illustrations and as I said before you can also share your Hive page on your Social Media pages.
From there you can let your imagination flow. As I have been recommending, visit other people's profiles and posts, check out what they are doing, copy the good things, and if you have doubts you can always ask for help. We will all be here to support you.
*Pro Tip*: Your cover image can be animated using a gif as the first image. That will get the attention of curators more effectively. It can also be any size, just be sure that the image is not cropped, because not all interfaces or frontends show them the same way. Here is an image on how the OnChainArt community front page looks:
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### Trading your HIVE and HBD to fiat money
#hive
#spanish
#cervantes
#tutorial
#peakd
#neoxian
#palnet
#posh
Payout: 0.000 HBD
Votes: 273
More interactions (upvote, reblog, reply) coming soon.