When you think about it, literary websites are rather like social networking sites such as Facebook. You are encouraged to “make friends” who then view your pieces. Everybody visits and chats with everyone else, and the website makes lots of money. You talk with people by making comments on their articles and communicating with them on a forum (where there is one). Meanwhile there are advertisements everywhere tempting you to click (and make even more money for the website owners).
It’s a “right game”! Most of your “earnings” come from advert clicks which have little to do with your content. As someone said to me on a forum, our articles are but advertising-boards or billboards.
In a way online writing is also like “Big Brother”, “Pop Idol”, “X Factor”, “Everycountry Has Talent” and a whole host of cooking and other television programmes. All of them involve viewers voting for their favourites, by phone, digital TV, or on the web. In these shows the “weakest links” get “voted off” until you are left with a winner.
On literary websites those with fewer votes or “Views” simply get buried out of sight (up to now!). Annoyingly, all new TV programmes and writing websites seem to follow this format. So an online writer has to work the chat sites and forums in order to become “popular”. If I get to be a nuisance, well that’s why. What a Game!
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