I’m skeptical.

I started an internet business in 1994 to promote my ideas on business English training. Because there was so little online material at that time, my website was ranked quite high in the early search engines for “business English.” But as time went by, these rankings went to the more astute operators. I tried to play the SEO game myself and even hired some experts, but my rankings never improved.

I have played with Facebook and other forums to market my various inventions. But no results.

Two years ago, I hired a professional marketing company to market my “alternative system of governance.” About four months and $1200 later, they could not get any action for my concept.

I don’t have much interest in becoming a paid writer. But I have to wonder about the investment made by some Medium contributors to earn $200 a month. For at least 99% of us, the business matrix is not there to earn a profit for the time we put into this forum.

I can’t post afford to write and post article every day or second day until the Medium algorithms take me a little more seriously. For example, my two recent posts to “Politically Speaking” have a readership of 11 and 7. Not worth the time to spend several hours of writing. I don’t begrudge these stats for I understand the behind-the-scenes people at Medium need to develop a formula that pays the bills. They cannot cater to the many well written articles on this forum.

BTW, it sure is fun being a reader here.

Writing, like professional sports and entertainment, is a very competitive field. The people who succeed will always be a small fraction of those who want to succeed. There is no “advice” that will elevate all aspirants to the point where they all can make a living, let alone a lucrative living.