Member-only story
Penny-wise and Pound-foolish
A lesson learned
This platform is one of many in the social media world. And as such, unless the Grand Wizard anoints a writer and serves him up to an army of paying members, you can’t make any money unless you network constantly. And that means reading through reams of material and then contributing positively in the comment section. It would also help if you have something to say in your stories that somebody might want to read. But I think that the last point is tertiary. Social media, be it this one or another, is about socializing — and not socializing meaningfully. But I digress.
Back when I started here, one piece of advice I did take was to ante up five bucks a month. Someone said that if you don’t have the halo around your little profile pic, people will be turned off and not read your stuff. It made sense to me.
Taking the hobby seriously during the pandemic, I read other people’s contributions, commented, and essentially, socialized as prescribed. All that considerable effort brought me maybe $2/day. Beyond what I’d earned for a significant amount of effort, what I found was not a lot of valuable reading. I mean — let’s get real. Medium is a platform for amateur writers who would like nothing more than to earn a living writing. Thus, you're gonna have to sift through a lot of reading material before you find something…
