My read routine... or lack thereof

Thursday, 27th of October 2022

The idea for this article comes from 2 writers, here on read.cash. @emily2u wrote about her writing and reading process and today she actually replied to my comment on that article, which prompted me to write about it. Thanks Ems!

The first article I read by @Coolmidwestguy was titled ‘My read mind’. I’ve never come across his articles before, even though we both have been writing here for a long time. In his article he explained in detail his read.cash routine. Speaking of which, my newest routine involves going to the main page and picking up the articles that titles stand out for me. This usually happens when I'm on my lunch at work and my bookmark takes me straight to the main page. That's something I rarely did in the past. Most times my notifications are full and I barely manage to clear them on a weekly basis. I grew to like this new routine. It's a great way to meet new writers.

My routine is like me

What does it mean? Simple - it changes and evolves or sometimes devolves as I see fit. Change is the only thing in life that is constant as they say. It would be hard to apply the same tactics while circumstances change constantly. Back in a day I first started writing on read.cash my tips from Rusty were up to $40 per article and thereore the tips I was giving to other writers were also generous. These days my articles can get less that $1. Provided that I only write every few days and still sponsor many writers, my tipping fund is gone before I even write another article.

Sponsorships are important

I noticed that as read.cash got quieter, many of my sponsors disappeared from my box. I am still lucky to have 5 amazing sponsors. For that am very grateful to @PVMihalache @AnonSunamun @LykeLyca @MD_Tibro and my first ever sponsor @JonicaBradley .

I myself have also reviewed all the sponsorships recently. I removed many not active writers from the list and at the moment I am only sponsoring 13 writers here. The list is very small comparing to 40-50 people I used to sponsor in better days. It also goes to show how many people have left the platform in these trying times. Nonetheless, I try to sponsor as many writers as I can, because I know how nice it is to know that people support my work with those monthly contributions.

What I read and tip?

Why do we read I ask? I, myslef read to learn something, to experience something, to feel something. Not every article here on read.cash will deliver this, therefore my reading routine here might not be to everyone's liking. I know many people follow the 'like for like' rule, but this has never agreed with me and my standards. Sure, if I see a new person in my comment section, then I will go check out their content and subscribe, but I don't necessarily do this with every comment on my article.

My reading routine is always changing too. I never get myself a set number of articles to read. Mainly I would pick a title which stands out for me for whatever reason. If like me, someone has an allotment and shares articles about it, I will read for sure. The same goes for every interest that I have. I open the notifications and scan for interesting titles or for the names that I love the style the most. There is not a chance that I will read every article of every person I follow, because there is not enough hours in a day. Thereore the title must stand out and promise an interesting read.

In the past I would just read as many articles as I had time for. These days my reading is limited by the funds I have to tip other articles. I won't read a thing if I have nothing to tip. Maybe that's weird, but I'm just used to rewarding writers for their work here on read.cash. That's also a motivating factor for me to write I guess. If my funds are low and I can't tip anymore, I know it's time to write to earn some tipping money ;)

Of course I try to be as fair as possible. At least once in a few days I try to read something from everyone I follow and see a frequent interaction. It's not a set rule though. Some writers will get much more interest from me than others, simply because they write about more interesting topics or because I prefer their style of writing.

The same goes for tipping of course. The more I enjoyed the read, the more I will tip. Alhough sometimes I just have a very low fund, so I might tip a little even if I want to tip a lot more.

Oh, and one more thing. I LOVE reading people's monthly summaries. Beginning of each month is always exciting for that reason. I didn't write a lot of these in the past months, but I always enjoy reading about others. So please keep them up peeps :)

How I write

Here again I don't follow common rules. Granted, I started writing to earn some BCH, but it has never been a source of income I rely on to pay my bills. My self employment and now my full time job are paying my monthly bills. In fact I have never paid out even $1 from my read.cash earnings. My main reason to write is to grow my portfolio, learn more about cryptoverse and of course to hone my writing skills. I have always loved writing, so growing my portfolio while doing what I love is just perfect.

For that reason I have also never pressured myself to write daily. Writing for the sake of writing is just not my thing. I love to write when I have something interesting to say. Some days I don't write at all, while other days I just have to write about something that just happened or else I won't find peace. Sometimes I read something that prompts me to write my own angle about the topic. Sometimes a fun challenge picks my interest. Sometimes there is a new way of earning or getting free perks that I want to inform others about. Sometimes a new and promissing project sparks my ineterest and I feel like writing about it could help someone.

It's a lucky day if I start and finish one article in an hour or two. Perfectionist mainly takes over and the whole process take 3-4 hours or even a few days. Everything has to be well researched, referenced and illustrated. Even then I hesitate before I press that publish button. What if there are spelling mistakes? Oh well, Ola will always point them out to me ;)

In all cases there has to be a story I want to write about. Otherwise the writing doesn't flow and with everything I do I like to be in the flow. So if you don't hear from me for a while, don't worry! I'm either depressed and don't wanna talk to anyone or I'm too busy enjoying my life or I am just not inspired to write. I will be back sooner or later ;)

How I decorate my articles

When I first learned about read.cash, apart from sharing my stories I was also excitied about sharing my pictures. Moths before joining here, I started posting on TSU and I became quite good at taking and editing pictures. In fact I had 1000's of them in my phone galleries. In my articles you will rarely find pictures from the internet. Only when I write about something so specific that I can't find a picture to illustrate it in my album or if I find a lot of funny meme's that I want to share. In those cases I will always attach the source where I got the pictures from. Otherwise all the pictures in my articles are always taken by me. It also adds a personal touch to all my writings.

Comments, upvotes and mentions

I am a very talkative person. Most of the times I have something to say already as I start reading an article. That's the beauty of picking the titles that interest me the most. There will however be times that I read an article and I just have nothing to say. It happens rarely, but it does. In that case I still try to leave a little tip and upvote at least.

The most entertaining comments for me are those on someone else's articles. @Olasquare is a master of it. He'll mention me in a comment of a random person, because something they wrote will remind him of me and we take over someone's comment section with our little banter. I apologise if we did it on your article, but it does make smile every single time.

One rule that I have is to not downvote. Wait, I lied. There were 2 times I downvoted an article. One time I saw some drastic pictures in the article. I really disliked it and it was the first time I used a downvote function. Second time was when I was receiving 4-5 downvotes on every single article I posted. I knew it was from a guy who's advances I rejected and he was also copying my articles. I suspected he either created many accounts to downvote my articles or asked his friends to do so. So at one point I got pissed of and downvoted one of his articles. I felt very shitty afterwards though. Like he managed to drag me to his level and shake my integrity. In the end I just blocked him and let it go.

There might be a time when I read an article and didn't like the opinion shared. That's not a reason to downvote for me. I will just move on without a comment and an upvote. If that person continuously writes about things I don't like, I will unsubscribe. No point wasting my time.

Mentions and short posts

Back in a day, when my portfolio updates sparked everyone's interest I had a lot of mentions in my notifications. People were trying to get me to read and tip handsomely. I still smile thinking about it. It is inevitable that many 'friends' show up when you're doing well.

Other than that, I really enjoy genuine mentions. If someone read my article and it gave them a topic to write about, I love it when they mentioned me. Or if they thought of me while writing their article, because it reminded them of something I did or said. That's really nice. It shows that I have made genuine connections in this online universe.

Therefore if someone gave me a topic to write about I will alwyas mention them in my article too. I hope it makes them smile too. As for the short posts, they are the first ones to mark as read. I don't care much for mentions to thank for sponsorhips and I don't participate either. Of course everyone is grateful. It can be shown in a meaningful comment on my article or better yet by constantly improving their writing skills. That's the reason why I sponsor other writers. To give them an incentive to write more.

Once in a blue moon I will mention all my sponsors in one article. Today is that day 😁

That's about it for today. I'm sure my read routine is very different than many other writers on read.cash. Being different and quirky however has always been my trademark. I never liked following rules or being like everyone else.

How about you my reader?

Until next time 💙

My other social media accounts:

Noise APP, Old Noise, Twitter, Hive, APPICS, Torum

Other ways I'm earning crypto:

SWEAT, Overline Land NFT, DogeShiba NFT, BlockNG, Splinterlands, Bee Mining, Coin Mining