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The Tale of Tips on Three Writing Platforms
So, Medium recently introduced tipping. Vocal has had them for a long time. Since they started, I think. Publish0X’s entire earning system is based on tipping. In crypto, no less (ETH and AMPL). I think Ko Fi and Buy Me A Coffee are also based on tipping. I haven’t used either of them in so long I’m not sure anymore, but I think they still are.
I think the first and last time I was earning tips was in 1988 when I was working for a car wash just out of high school. I have to admit, that counting my tips at the end of my shift was always pretty exciting. I can’t say I’ve been able to experience the same thrill yet from tips for my writing, but I’m hoping that might change at some point.
Right now Vocal and Medium are both tied at $0 tips!!! Yeah, go team!
Publish0X has been a little better at $0.65 worth of ETH and AMPL. Though to be fair, I’ve only put about six stories on PUBLISH0X this month compared with the hundreds I’ve put on Medium and Vocal over the last 2–5 years. And who knows, $0.65 worth of ETH and AMPL now might be worth a lot more in the future. Or a lot less possibly.
I don’t think my lack of tips on Medium is because my writing sucks. I think it might have to do with how tedious it is to tip someone via Pay Pal rather than any problems with Medium’s tipping system. On the one hand, I’m glad Pay Pal has a lot of security hoops you have to jump through to tip someone, but at the same time, I wonder if people get frustrated and give up before they finish tipping writers. I know I almost did when I tried tipping a writer.
I’m not sure what is up with Vocal. Until last month I hadn't been active on there in a long time. Other than the bonuses Vocal gives occasionally, I’ve never earned more than a few cents a month there for reads. That might be the main reason why I’ve never gotten any tips there either.
When I first attempted to tip an author using Vocal I got an error about connecting to Stripe. I think the author I tried to tip doesn’t have the tipping feature turned on. I tried again for another author and was able to use Google Pay very easily. Far easier than Pay Pal through Medium.
Publish0X is by far the easiest. Their entire earnings system is based on tips. Though the tips are either Ethereum or their own coin called Ample. And because I only have $0.65 worth of coins right now I haven’t tried to collect yet. From the quick scan I did of their directions to collect your earnings, I got the impression that moving your coins to your wallet might be a somewhat tedious and complicated process. It seems like it has to be done on certain days of the week at certain times of the day. If my earnings hit at least $10 on Publish0X I suppose I’ll give it a try, but I don’t think it will be worth the effort until then, assuming I ever earn that much.
