Let me start by first saying this fact; onboarding is never easy! Whoever says it's easy probably just brings someone in and leaves them to figure things out for themselves which is probably as good as not onboarding them at all because most of the time, they give up within a few days. So, what made me say it isn't easy? Well, because you have to hold the hands of the newbie for the first few weeks and teach them the essential things they need to know about Hive, and that my friends, isn't easy at all
I have had so many frustrating experiences with onboarding people to Hive that it actually got to a point where I started hiding my activities on Hive from everyone around me but later on, I decided to change strategies in the way I onboard people. Let's just say that out of over 30 people that I have tried to onboard, only 2 are still active today and have learned a lot about the platform. I used to write on another platform called readcash and I onboarded 3 of my closest friends there.
When things went south on readcash and I migrated to Hive, I also brought my friends along but they gave up within some months. When I was still in the university, some of my classmates have seen me either engaging or writing articles and they asked me about it. At first, I will be reluctant to explain but I will still go ahead to tell them about Hive and after taking time to explain, they won't join because they see it as too much work. To me, that one is even better as compared to people who will join, ask you questions for over a week and then give up later on.
The recent experience I had with onboarding was in August 2023. I came across a thread on nairaland forum about a 23-year-old student who said he needed a way of making money while in school so that he will be able to take care of some of his needs and won't have to fully depend on his parents to provide everything he needs. I knew how Hive has helped me over the years with getting a new phone, and laptop, as well as sorting out my needs in school, so I recommend Hive to him.
Trust Nigerians to jump on that comment and bombard me with questions 😂 I started getting questions on how to join Hive and one person asked for my WhatsApp number which I probably shouldn't have given out on a public forum. I started receiving messages every day from people who wanted to join Hive and after explaining what Hive is, how it works, the importance of engagement, as well as a lot of other things, many of them dropped out.
Some will eventually show interest and ask me for the link to sign up and after giving them the link, it just ends like the screenshot below and they never sign up. I eventually got tired of always explaining about Hive and nobody joining, so I just copied previous responses I sent to other people and sent them to a new person asking about Hive. I also started sending them links to articles that talked about a lot of things about Hive, but most of them never read them.
The few that manage to sign up will start asking questions like “How long will it take me to make $100?” Or “How much can I be getting every day?”, sigh. Two people managed to publish their introduction article and they gave up after that because they didn't earn much from it. Before they even did their introduction, I remember telling them that they might not get a reasonable amount of upvotes but they shouldn't be discouraged because a lot of people started that way but I guess they completely ignored that advice
One thing I have learned from all these is that you can never make people to be active on Hive. No matter how you motivate or encourage a person who doesn't want to put in the effort to make it in Hive, they will eventually give up. I had to learn about hive all by myself because the person who told me about it wasn't active, it was also on the same nairaland and he simply just dropped a link to it. I learned everything I knew by going through
hive.blog FAQ. I didn't even know that frontends like ecency and peakd existed until months later because I signed up with hive.blog
The journey wasn't easy but I was determined, and it's that determination that a lot of these people I have tried onboarding lack. At the first sight of an obstacle or a challenge, they give up on Hive. I believe the major problem is that they have unrealistic expectations; they expect to be making around $100 every month immediately after they join and when they can't get anything reasonable in their first post, they are gone. One principle I have always lived with is that nothing good comes easy, success takes time and you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot to get it, that sacrifice sometimes is your time but I guess those people don't even know that.
Thanks for reading
Connect with me on:Twitter: @kushyzeenaReadcash: @kushyzee 
