Evaluation of read.cash – Identifying Problems

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.

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