Paid Writing Platforms & Making Tips

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Okay, I had so many people ask about these things so I'm just going to summarize everything here. I write on multiple sites right now in an attempt to make some money. I'm not earning a lot because I haven't been doing it for very long, but I'm finding my flow and getting better at it so I feel I know enough now to hit the hot spots on these things. First, obviously there's myLot here. We get paid to post small blog/journal style entries and we get paid for replies on our posts/comments. It's not a lot, but I find that it's perfect to counter the $5 monthly subscription I pay over on... Medium. You don't have to pay the $5 to write on Medium, but I would recommend it if you want to take the platform seriously. If you're not a member you have access to only five I think free reads per month. The $5 gives you access to the entire library of works on the site, and they're invaluable to learning how to actually use and make money off writing for Medium. Not to mention if you're a paying member that means you're helping out other writers on the site, which means they're more willing to help you out. Medium pays you on a sort of sliding scale based on how many PAYING members read your article in their entirety. I say sliding scale because it also depends on your view-to-read scale. For example, if ten people view (click on) your article and nine of those ten people read the piece in its entirety, you get a higher pay rate than if 100 people view your piece but only nine read it. Aka you get more money per read if the number of people who open your article matches the number of people who actually fully read it. Medium pays via Stripe only and you can't start getting paid until you have 100 followers (which is really easy to get to, I did within two weeks of joining the site). (If you're thinking of joining Medium as a paying member, please DM me so I can send you my referral link. I get paid extra if I can get other people to sign up through my link). Simily. Simily is a new baby writing site that focuses primarily on fiction pieces. You can find fiction works on Medium but they're bogged down and hidden among all the nonfiction works. Simily will pay you for full reads from both members on the site AND external views right now, which is pretty cool, but that's only happening while they're new. Once they get enough paying members it'll switch to a system more like Medium. They pay a straight $.20/read at the moment. Downsides - it's very glitchy because it's new, the monthly membership fee is I believe $6 or $7 (I'm not a member yet because I, like many other users, am not willing to put in money to a site that's so glitchy rn). People are abusing the site by dropping in and posting their nonfiction articles into fiction categories, making it hard to navigate the site. As a nonpaying member, you're limited to only three free reads per month, but a bug in the site is counting your own stories as part of your "free reads" so you have to be very careful even opening your own work to make edits and such. Basically it's a pain in the butt, but it has potential if the admins can get their stuff together. They pay out through PayPal. https://simily.co/ If you want to do novel writing, I'd recommend checking out Stary. On that one you can post your chapters at will if you're looking for audiences to sort of just read your work and critique for future publishing on Kindle or whatnot. You don't get paid for that BUT after you've posted so many words of your novel you can submit it to the Stary admins to see if they want to pick it up for actual publishing. If they like it, you can get paid bonuses each month just by updating your work every day, another bonus once the work is fully finished, and then royalties once they publish it through their own reading app. I haven't actually tried this one yet, I've just read up a lot about it on both their own site and from users who have written about all the ins and out over on Medium and it seems legit. They also offer contests that give you even more opportunities to earn a buttload of money. https://www.starywriting.com/ Then there's Kofi/Buy Me a Coffee/you can toss Patreon in here too, they're separate sites where you make an account and your "fans" or readers or supporters can pay you extra for the projects you're working on or just to help you out a little while you're trying to support yourself through your creative works. Patreon is more commission/project based and is a monthly subscription sort of thing. People "subscribe" to you and they can either make a one time donation or choose to have an autopay donation taken out of their account every month. YouTubers use Patreon a lot to support their channels, and supporters might get behind the scenes content or advanced updates or whatever for their subscriptions. Kofi/Buy Me a Coffee are basically just tip jars. It gives you a link or button you can add to your social accounts, your blog articles, on your websites, whatever, where people can leave you an extra tip just for the heck of it. Payments generally go through Paypal or Stripe. I add my Kofi link to the bottom of every one of my Medium articles in case someone wants to tip me a little extra for my work. https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ https://ko-fi.com/ I hope that cleared up some of the confusion but if there's further questions, feel free to ask! I had a lot of free time while I'm in between jobs to poke around all these things lol.