Well.... hello there and thanks for dropping by into the Frosty Collective, always nice to see a new name and a new face. I've been writing here since 2018 and I don't really think of it as social media. It's a place where I comes to write articles and throw them out into the abyss of readers before I carry on with life and go write screenplays and stage scripts. I've been known to take months off. Dave will attest to this, he's checked I'm sill breathing more than once.
I'm going to point you to this article here. https://medium.com/p/f3c870dbf402
See the first trap 'The Simon and Garfunkel Experience'
If it helps put it in perspective for you, I'm averaging less than 1000 followers per year. That doesn't matter, not really - what matters is that I've got much much better at writing. I'm in regular contact with a guy who has 40K followers and we earn (roughly) the same amount of money - but neither of us is here for the money.
If you write instead for the process of getting better at writing then the money will come. Sometimes lots of it arrives, sometimes very little arrives. Sometimes you'll bang out a piece that has taken you days of polishing and 4 people will read it and nobody will clap. Sometimes you'll bang out a piece in 20 minutes and the entire Universe shows up to applaud it. You have to disconnect from the intermittent reward, otherwise you'll burn out.
Write on Medium because the process of getting better at words is worth it. I spent a decade on Facebook and it paid me nothing, nada, zilch. I was putting out hilarious statuses, great pictures, political commentary and all the same sort of thing I do here. In return for which they sold my details to advertisers. In June 2018, Medium paid me about $2.63 for doing the same thing. I'm up on the deal.
The entrepreneurs get bored, the bubbles grow and burst. Empires rise and fall. Position yourself somewhere in the middle and disengage your brain from the reward and the little green dot and everything will work out just fine. Trust me, I'm a Penguin. :o)
