Maximize Your Earnings: 10 Common Mistakes to Avoid as a Helium Hotspot Owner and How to Fix Them
Helium hotspots have grown in popularity as a way to earn rewards and participate in the decentralized networking ecosystem. However, as with any new technology, there are bound to be some mistakes made along the way. To ensure your success as a hotspot owner and maximize your earning potential, it's crucial to understand the key elements of a high-earning hotspot and the common mistakes to avoid. In this article, we'll cover the top 10 mistakes hotspot owners make and provide helpful tips on how to avoid them.
- Not Doing Your Research: Before deploying your hotspot, it's important to do your research and understand the best practices and common mistakes to avoid. This can save you a ton of time and frustration, and help you earn higher rewards. You are started in the write direction by reading this article!
- Overcrowding: One of the most common mistakes hotspot owners make is placing their hotspot in the same hex as another hotspot without providing significantly better coverage. This goes against 'use-full coverage' and can lead to low earnings and wasted effort. To avoid this mistake, focus on finding a unique and optimal location for your hotspot.
- Focusing on the Antenna: Many new hotspot owners get caught up in the question of "What's the best antenna?" However, this is not a high-earning question. Instead, it's important to understand the role of the antenna in providing coverage and not overbuying an antenna that could go beyond the local hotspots and coverage you should be targeting.
- Not Getting Your Antenna Outside and at Elevation: To provide useful coverage, it's important to get your antenna outside and at a high elevation without any line of sight interruption. This will give you a larger area of coverage and make it easier to verify your signal and earn rewards.
- Ethernet Cable Connection: Hotspots don't have super strong WiFi reception, so it's important to hardline your hotspot in to ensure a reliable and strong connection. This will help improve uptime, coverage and avoid any frustration caused by an unreliable connection.
- Not Monitoring: It's important to regularly check on the performance of your hotspot, such as the number of packets sent and received, to ensure that it's working optimally and to troubleshoot any issues that may arise. A great tool and resource for this is Hotspotty Connect.
- Updates: Software updates for your hotspot may include important security patches or performance improvements. Failure to keep your hotspot up-to-date can lead to decreased performance and security vulnerabilities. In most situations wirmware updates are automatically pushed by the manufacturer.
- Not Understanding the Helium Token Economics: Helium DC tokens are used to pay for the use of the network and HNT token is used to reward hotspot owners for their contributions. It's important to understand how the token economics work and how they impact your earnings.
- Active Community: Being an active member of the Helium community can help you stay informed about updates and developments, and connect with other hotspot owners for support and advice. Additionally, participating in the community can also help you discover new use cases for your hotspot that can generate more revenue. You can join the Official Helium Discord to get involved in the discussions.
By understanding and avoiding these common mistakes, you can ensure the success of your Helium hotspot deployment and earn higher rewards. Additionally, to further increase earning potential, consider adding more use cases for your hotspot. For example, using it as a way to track your assets, or a sensor for weather monitoring. Helium's decentralized network is flexible and allows for various use cases that can generate revenue for hotspot owners.
