I see you’ve been thinking, thinking on the platform dilemma :)

I think the real mistake is looking at the money. As writers — and readers — wouldn’t it be better to worry about the work being read by more people (Medium claims to have 25M readers) over a greater length of time (eg your story not appearing and disappearing within a week, buried under the masses — this is also known as properly curated) than how much each reader contributes to payment? Because, if it were to be seen and read by more people, and that view/involvement noted, then even 0.001 per read would be worth more than the $4 “donated” by one reader?

Now, what are the possible ways that can happen? One way is to recommend the work of those one reads and enjoys via claps, twits and comments. The more each reader recommends those works, the more they’re read. And as a result of that, the more the author’s work will be sought after, and the more the story will earn, eventually.

That is a natural and normal side effect of reading and being generous with recommendations, but it is certainly not a practice followed by many on this platform. There seems to be some lapse in understanding that greater visibility of works = greater visibility of author favourites = greater payments as more readers become aware of authors and different types of stories.

Let’s take two imaginary authors, we’ll call them Frank and Tom.

Frank writes ten pieces a week and reads maybe 10 other authors during the week. He only gives 1 clap per story he reads and never recommends others because he believes the pie is only so big. He is conflicted about things like quality and judgement — why raise the visibility of someone else’s stories if he thinks they’re just okay? His stories make fifty cents per month, so he writes more, but the responses go down as his time to interact with others decreases.

Tom writes three or four stories per week, some short, some longer, thoughtful pieces. He reads and supports a hundred other authors through claps, recs, comments and interactions through the week. Those hundred authors in turn support Tom’s work and bring new readers to his pieces each week through their own claps for higher visibility, recs, comments and interactions. Tom makes a buck per story, then two, then ten as more and more readers come to see what he has to offer. He doesn’t need to follow everyone in order to get followers and while the numbers of followers doesn’t equate to the readers of his stories, that number is slowly growing, to the point where when he talks his other websites, people go to look at what he’s doing.

There’s no requirement to help others. It’s just one of those things that when people are genuinely generous and support each other, the potential networking spreads exponentially instead of linearly.