When it comes to blogging on the Blockchain, Steemit has been revolutionary.

However, Steemit is not without faults: Bots, upvote abuse, dysfunctional witnesses, @berniesanders, bid bots, reward pool abuse, spam, plagiarism, and the pay to play model to name a few.

Couple these with bearish Steem prices and one may be inclined to head out searching for greener pastures.

From blogging with Bitcoin Cash, wannabee Facebooks, and social media marketplaces, there are definitely pastures.

But, are they greener?

Let's take a look at the top five alternatives to Steemit for Bloggers:

Yours.org

From the Bitcoin Cash family of blogging platforms, Yours.org comes with an upvoting system that Steemit could take a page out of.

Curators share 50% of the rewards as long as they are one of the first 25% to upvote. The other 50% goes into the pocket of the writer. Bloggers can also share a preview of their post and reveal the full content only to those who upvote - a nifty little feature. Furthermore, If someone really likes your work there is the ability to tip.

Yours.org charges 10 cents a post and 5% on every other transaction excluding tips.

The platform is barebones. It appears as a carbon copy of the other Bitcoin Cash Social media apps like Matter, Blockpress, and Memo.

You do require an invite code to sign up. Sadly, five minutes of Googling did not reveal any such code, but it did reveal hundreds of people asking for one with no luck.

A nice little blogging platform with the potential to earn some loose Bitcoin Cash change if you can get an invite.

Sapien.network

The Sapien Network is a social media application aiming to be completely self-governed by users.

The idea is users will be able to vote on what direction they want the platform to go in and what upgrades should be pursued.

Sapien has its own currency called SPN. SPN can be used to vote for content and tip content creators. 

A clever feature on Sapien is the public and private browsing options. Users can select if they want their identity revealed when interacting with the platform or whether they want to remain anonymous. A nice feature for those of us who are troll inclined.

The problem with Sapien is it's a ghost town. No one is staking SPN to vote and the only posts seeing activity are the ones made by developers.

However, signing up and opening an account can be done in under a minute.

A great concept with no users.

Scrypto.io

Scrypto isn't really a blogging platform. It looks like a poor knock-off of Facebook with a terrible color scheme.

At first glance, the trending page is full of ICO and health product spam.

However, one such spam post was advertising a new social network app being built on Ethereum called Dmunity (yes, another one).

Other than the spam, there's not much else happening at Scrypto.

Nevertheless, signing up and creating an account is as easy as verifying an email address.

As for payments, the application is run by a Blockchain company called Digital Price (they have the appearance of every other obscure coin) who have their own Blockchain and currency. Apart from tipping users, however, there doesn't seem to be an inbuilt upvote payment system.

If for some reason you have a burning desire to use a Blockchain based Facebook and get no rewards for your posts, Scrypto may be for you.

Minds.com

Minds.com is Steemit's biggest challenger when it comes to Blogging.

With its sleek design, smooth UI, and healthy community, Minds has what it takes to lure disenfranchised Steemians away.

Upvotes decide how many points a post gets. The more points, the more money the posts earns. There are curator rewards too.

The most interesting monetization feature for bloggers is their subscriptions. Bloggers can sell Patreon style subscriptions and their content will only be delivered to their subscribers.

There are also tips and you can even earn coins for just being active on the platform.

The best part is Minds doesn't charge any fees or commisions to do any activity on their platform. However, they do have a "Boost" feature where users can pay to have their content promoted (similar to Facebook).

If you're sick of Steemit and want to try something new, give minds.com a go.

Sociall.io

Even though the ability to blog hasn't been added to the Sociall app, it's still worth a mention.

Sociall is the most ambitious and unique Blockchain social media app.

It seeks to be a Social Media marketplace where users can trade goods and services. 

It also wants to be a decentralized data storage solution.

If that wasn't enough, it also wants to launch a Debit card where users can spend tokens in the real world.

Did I mention the blogging feature hasn't been implemented yet?

Sociall may become a popular place for content marketing someday - if they can pull off these bold plans.

Conclusion

Even though Steemit is plagued with issues, it still is light years ahead of its competition.

Steemit continues to hold onto its first-mover advantage. With its small yet devoted core community and auxiliary Dapps like D-tube, not even Minds.com can be considered greener pastures ... yet.

But with the competition continuing to develop, and more competitors entering the arena every day, how long can Steemit maintain it's title as the best Blockchain based blogging platform?

How long until a true alternative to Steemit emerges?