Evaluation of read.cash – Identifying Problems

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Avatar for Mictorrani
4 years ago
Topics: read.cash

I have not been here more than 2 weeks yet, and this is still a small site, but I can clearly see some of the problems with read.cash. That is not criticism of the read.cash team, they are doing a good job, but of the whole concept behind it.

I don't have the solution, and we'll not find any solution unless we first define the problems - so let's start there. Perhaps that can start a discussion.

1. Focus of the Community

The community is too focussed on BCH and cryptocurrencies. Interesting as these topics are, nobody wants to read about them all the time. It is fine that they are there, but as of today, almost only crypto- or BCH-focused articles are opened more than 10 times and they are the only ones sometimes receiving any meaningful amount of donations. (Just a few of them, but that has to do with quality and other factors.) However, read.cash is almost meaningless for those writing about something else.

(Admittedly, I have not written a word about cryptocurrencies here and my articles have more readers than 10, but that is because I advertise these links elsewhere. I know that a vast majority of my readers here are outsiders. I doubt that any single of my posts has been opened by more than 5 people from this community.)

So what do we need?

An influx of members with more diverse interests.

What can we, as members, do?

Try to get more people interested in this platform, people who are not only focussed on crypto-matters. That is not entirely easy though, as we will see in section 2.

2. Here are Authors, not Readers

Members are here to write and earn easy money; the interest in reading is very limited. It is like a crowd where everyone is talking but nobody listens. (There are a few exceptions, but on an average it is like that.) The very system gives an incentive to write, but no incentive to read.

Why should a reader join? They can follow a link, come and read, and leave again. They won't donate, they have no BCH, and they will not take the trouble to sign up as a member or buying BCH just to tip the author of an article they can read anyway. In practice they have no access to the donation mechanism! And we must remember that while every author is a potential reader, every reader is not an author. Indeed, authors are few relative to readers.

As a business model, this is equivalent to, as if in old time publishing, authors would sell books only to other authors, but everyone else would be able to read for free. Not a viable business model.

I think a platform like this will ultimately fail if there is no incentive for passive readers to join.

3. Exposure

I have seen people complaining about that they get too little exposure here.

Perhaps that is true, but that is inevitable on a platform with so many authors; everything cannot be exposed all the time. Moreover, I don't see read.cash mainly as a means to exposure. Advertising links to the posts is the responsibility of the respective authors. If you rely on readers finding you only through read.cash, you will be disappointed. The platform provides storage of your material, the donation mechanism, a mechanism for sponsors, and that's it! Some exposure comes as an extra, but that is not the purpose of read.cash, as I understand it. They expose boosted and upvoted posts more than others and some new readers might come from that, but that is more like a side-effect of the system. If you expect more than a handful readers, you cannot rely on that only.

I don't see this as a genuine problem with read.cash. Especially not as long as the community consists of authors and not readers who are not authors (see section 2 above). Read.cash is available to search engines; beyond that, exposure is not their responsibility.

4. Conclusion

The most urgent problem to solve is how to attract passive readers (with a wide variety of interests) to membership, BCH, and the donation mechanism. (Passive readers are readers who are not authors.) Quite frankly, I have no idea about how to do that, but I hope this post can trigger a discussion.

Copyright © 2020 Meleonymica/Mictorrani. All Rights Reserved.

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Avatar for Mictorrani
4 years ago
Topics: read.cash

Comments

The fact that you wrote this 4 months ago yet it still heavy applies to how read.cash is now... seems nothing will ever change here, maybe it will change for the worse

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4 years ago

It is true that passive readers are key to the development and growth of any blogging website. Kudos to team read.cash as this has been sorted out with the point system.

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4 years ago

Do you think it has been sorted out? The points system is fine, it is needed in some form, but I don't think it has solved the problem about donations from passive readers. After all, the points system is not giving all that much. Direct tipping is still the more important. It is also the most fair, since readers are those who benefit from the work of the authors, they should pay something.

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4 years ago

The point system has a form of reward for passive readers. Once you read and comment, you get points which will be converted to cash. The system clearly cut off the lazy ways of making money.

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4 years ago

But that does not give anything to the author, and he is the one who has made the job. And I still don't think many people would register a membership with read.cash only for reading and the small points they get for commenting. Overall, this is a very difficult problem to find a really good solution to.

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4 years ago

Authors have been cared for in terms of upvoting, point for comment, thumbsup, etc.

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4 years ago

Yeah, the points system makes things better, but not perfect. It is also abused by people posting empty articles or just a sentence, or the same short text many times. They take a lot of points (and a large part of the daily fund) without adding anything of value. I think, however, that there will come a solution for that in due time. I read somewhere that they are working on it.

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4 years ago

This is a very good point! I believe the brains behind read.cash should find means of screening articles before they are published. Of recent, there are so many worthless or very low grade articles that make no sense and with poor English. "All this constitute slap on the face of read.cash" Some writers are just eager to drop as many low grade articles daily to earn points...too bad!

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4 years ago

Yes, and they take a lot of points and a large part of the daily fund, leaving less for those who have produced value. Some sort of minimum quality ought to be required. But how to implement that? Screening, well... reading everything is a huge job. It is, as I said, difficult to solve all these things in a good way.

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4 years ago

Yeah! Something reasonable must be done by team read.cash to stop the mediocrity. Nice day to you.

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4 years ago

You made an important point. Passive readers are very important, but they will only come when they have something interesting to read. So first you have to get authors who are willing to publish interesting unique content. The new points system will hopefully attract new authors, but I see a lot of inferior content lately. This will not attract the passive readers.

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4 years ago

You are absolutely right. Here is too much inferior content by people who believe they will earn a lot of BCH with a minimum of effort. I even saw one post which was only a request for sponsors - nothing more! That certainly scares away passive readers, who will not find it worthwhile to dig in all that rubbish to find an occasional gem.

Thanks for the donation!

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4 years ago

You write good content. Subscribed!

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4 years ago

Thanks, and welcome!

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4 years ago

These are very good suggestions. Read.cash has provided rooms for various categories of articles, but I think cryptocurrency and BCH garnered more attention. I also think the most important thing here is versatility.

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4 years ago

I see you wrote this a few days ago. I am sorry, I did miss that at the time.

Yes, versatility is very important. I think it is on its way to become better, even if it goes slowly. Some articles not being about BCH and cryptocurrency have really got a little more attention lately than one could see just a month ago. But still BCH-cryptocurrency are too dominating.

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4 years ago

The most urgent problem to solve is how to attract passive readers

i think u said it best, "The platform provides storage of your material, the donation mechanism, a mechanism for sponsors, and that's it!"

aside from not having a mobile app, read.cash is comparable to Medium .. and the only way I read Medium is from the notifications of its app OR links from others; otherwise I have no idea what their homepage even looks like

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4 years ago