September Hive Power Up Day - start of a new season. I love a picture of a digger, I've done quite well this summer between the Botanic Garden and the redevelopment of the house next door (I wasn't sure whether that digger was going to topple into my garden, it looked a bit precarious). It's been a glorious summer, occasionally a little warm, but the tomatoes have done well and I've had a nice break from work.
Today, I'm powering up to 68,000 HIVE Power on my way to 72,000 HP by the end of the year and 100,000 HP by April 2025. There are a few small changes to my passive income portfolio below, and then the bulk of the post is an update about ListNerds - the first project in my development portfolio.
There are a few gentle suggestions for ListNerds and I welcome your views in the comments.
Best wishes on your journey and for everyone going to HiveFest: have a lovely time!
Portfolio
Notes
SPI - Starting fund: $13,000; Value 28.08.22: $152,823
Disclaimer: I am part of the SPI leadership team and run the Saturday Savers Club on the 
SPI - Socially Pooled Investments
Continues to be the jewel in the crown with a wide portfolio of twenty plus assets backing each and every token. Has a leadership team of five, each carrying responsibility for a different area of investment and growth, gold standard transparent reporting, contingency plans in place. Has just introduced a loyalty scheme with benefits for different levels of stake (I was delighted to learn that I qualify for God-tier SPI Royalty 😜).
EDS
My favourite Hive-Engine token - simple, straightforward, low cost of entry, excellent HIVE income. Each and every token is backed by 1 HIVE, powered up in the wallet and delegated for income, a proportion of which is distributed to stakeholders every Monday. The price is pegged to 1 HIVE, they are available in the market or you can purchase miners.
EDS mini miners are on sale in Hive-Engine at 1 HIVE each (approximately 9,000 left), there are 480 chances to mine HIVE every 24 hours. EDS mini miners (EDSMM) and EDS miners (EDSM) are scheduled to mine EDS for twenty plus years; although EDSM are sold out, you can still buy them from the Hive-Engine market.
EDS currently has a return of about 29% (this will vary over time). EDSMM, designed to have a 20% return each year when all of them are sold, currently has a return of about 32%. This will diminish as more tokens are sold, until it reaches 20% at 100% of tokens sold.
LEO
Both LBI and CL pay dividends in LEO each week. I've decided to HODL beyond my target of 5,000 LP, all of which is delegated to 
Other Investments
I've claimed my SPK and RAGNAROK airdrops. I've decided to stake and delegate SPK to node operators. I'm still waiting for more news about RAGNAROK - can anyone enlighten me in the comments?
I also have a small stash of staked SPS,currently 36.74% APR. Let's see what happens there.
Development Portfolio
LISTNERDS
Having achieved many of the targets for my passive income portfolio, I'm starting to branch into stage two: my development portfolio. Part of the rationale behind growing my HIVE stake is in order to invest in second layer projects. These, by their nature, are much higher risk than, say SPI or EDS. For example, ListNerds, my first choice for development investment, is a new enterprise, exploits an innovation and is a crypto project: a triple whammy of risk. 😁
As with all risks, there's an analysis to be done, including your own attitude to risk, and a judgement to be made about whether to take that risk and to what extent. For example, my attitude to risk is in the medium to higher risk category:
People in this category are relatively comfortable with investment risk. They aim for higher long term returns and understand that this can also mean some sustained periods of poorer performance. They are prepared to accept significant fluctuation in value to try and achieve better long term returns. (Source)
Assess your attitude to investment risk - one of many similar tools available.
My criteria for investing includes:
- a sound model
- reputable team
- contingency planning
- good reporting and
- potential for passive income
Here's my evaluation of ListNerds and an introduction to ListNerds on my alt 
The basic LISTNERDS subscription offers excellent opportunities for people who want to grow their account and discover new content and content creators to build their network. The subscription is free and allows you to send one email a week and provides access to other content creators who want to share their content and engage with you.
One of the biggest assets of ListNerds is the team behind it (founders of the CTP token) who have a range of skills and experiences, clearly defined allocation of roles and who, importantly, have worked together for some years. Each of them is established on Hive.
ListNerds has a huge learning resource behind it, ClickTrackProfit, much of it free access, for anyone who wants improve their marketing and promotion skills. It has a helpdesk and support tickets, and a Discord server for questions and discussion. There are also regular shows with a relaxed format and the opportunity to ask questions. There is also the CTP Blueprint from 
ListNerds has some excellent role models - people who have long experience of building relationships and promoting businesses and services using email - and there are multiple opportunities for learning from other people.
Critique
The past month has seen some changes in LISTNERDS including getting the inflation rate (the rate at which LISTNERDS are issued and distributed) down to a more realistic level.
The very high inflation rate for the first six months of LISTNERDS's blockchain launch coupled with an initial buy wall of 2 HIVE per LISTNERD, intended to stimulate the market, has created some structural problems, and this is exacerbated by two interlinked factors:
- the imbalance in rewards that go to receivers (people that undertake to read and vote on emails from senders).
- the reputation system which, among other things, funnels rewards upwards.
The proposition is that the reputation system is managed through upvoting and downvoting emails, however, it is not in anyone's interest to downvote emails, not least because it uses voting mana and, at the same time, removes rewards for opening and voting on emails and reading the linked posts. Plus senders have a vested interest in maintaining the flow of LISTNERD rewards. (For more information about the model and terms like senders and receivers, see the White Paper).
These combined factors have led to a subversion of the ListNerds proposition: rather than understanding Listnerds as a tool for promoting and growing an audience for your blog (or business) or discovering new content, and the paid subscriptions (also known as upgrades) as a business cost, some early adopters have perceived ListNerds as an income or end in itself.
As a consequence, there are many emails churned out everyday with little attention to the experience of the receiver (ie the audience for the email and hopefully, your blog or business) or a promotion plan for the blog or business in question. People are concerned with how many LISTNERDS they are receiving, rather than whether they are growing their followers for their blog and getting more engagement - comments and votes - on their posts.
We also see behaviour that would be downvoted to oblivion on Hive: persistent recycling of old posts, and poorly written, low effort posts with less than 100 words milking rewards from people in the rich list top ten. These posts are not downvoted on LISTNERDS for the all reasons given above.
There is also a clash between a traditional entrepreneurial culture of, for example, "one-time only offers" and the desired intention of the founders to promote community control and influence. It's difficult to knit together techniques that engender FOMO and competition, with a values-based collaborative approach where the community works together to support behaviour in the interest of the community as the whole, and takes action collectively against poor actors who extract value.
A challenge that ListNerds shares with other tokens and tribes is, barring SplinterLands, the very small, albeit perfectly formed, Hive community. There are somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 posts each day, with Venezuela and Nigeria heading the list for user numbers. There have been conversations elsewhere on Hive about the difficulties of growing the market for tokens until there is greater adoption.
This requires realistic expectations and time-frames for investment and growth. Three to five years is a normal time span to start seeing profits on a business start up. Given the peculiarities and cyclical nature of crypto it may be longer.
However, that timescale and the bear market means there is plenty of time to hone ListNerds and iron out the wrinkles ready for mass adoption.
Gentle Suggestions
- Growing the user base
Having standard nine MAIL rewards for the basic subscription. This would enable the accumulation of 450 MAILS over five days, following the recommendation to pick and read ten emails a day. This would be adequate for the number of active users on ListNerds at present to ensure a good chance of getting an email read, responded to and verified. This comparatively small change would make ListNerds a much more viable option for receivers.
The number of MAILS could vary according to reputation, as they do now, but given the complexity of figuring out the reputation system, it might be a better idea to keep it simple and have nine MAILS as standard for the basic subscription.
- Reporting
Great to see that there has been some narrative reporting to complement the videos (it's a hard job remembering which video had what information and then finding it on the timeline). It would be good to see this become weekly reporting and, ideally, on theaccount, so it's easy to find.
It would be helpful to have the following information on a weekly basis:
| Wk # | New Subs | Active Subs | No of emails | No of verified emails |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | ||||
| Premium | ||||
| Business | ||||
| Enterprise |
Reward distribution is a key metric for quickly reviewing progress and growth. It is not a precise measurement as some people (including me) have bought LISTNERDS, rather than received them as rewards, however, it is a good starting place.
Here's the latest monthly breakdown, courtesy of 
(Source)
- Goals and Timelines
As a community, should we be setting goals about increasing and retaining the user base over time? Given the number of posters on Hive (4k-6k), should we aim to have a percentage of those as subscribers to ListNerds by 31 December 2022? How many and how do we reach them?
Conclusion
ListNerds offers great potential for Hive. We're in that exciting development stage when we're confronting and addressing the complexities of making it work and truly creating value. There is an experienced development team and a committed core community. There's also lots of opportunity to attract smaller accounts, to help them build their network and, very practically, grow their account by the equivalent of 3 HIVE a week.
Let me know what you think!
