A Note On Quora And Simily

Summary

The author discusses their experience with earning money on Quora and Simily, two platforms that they found to be disappointing.

Abstract

The author describes their experience with Quora, where they received millions of views but no financial compensation or valuable connections. They signed up for Quora's partner program after it was implemented but have only earned $9.97 over four months. The author also tried Simily, a platform that claims to pay writers 2 cents per view, but found that their earnings did not match the number of views they received. The author has 7 stories on Simily and has earned 38 cents after a week. The author concludes that these platforms are not a viable source of income.

Opinions

The author feels that Quora and Simily are not worthwhile platforms for earning money.
The author is disappointed with the earnings they have received from Quora's partner program.
The author is skeptical of Simily's claim to pay writers 2 cents per view.
The author concludes that they will not be discarding their DoorDash hot bag anytime soon, implying that these platforms are not a reliable source of income.

Big nothing

If you feel like it’s a struggle turning a buck on this platform, try Quora or Simily to compound your frustration. I feel like I’m back working a prison job when I view my earnings.

Quora is a site on which I garnered literally millions of views in a period of a few months — all to no avail. There was no partner program with which to earn for all those views, and not one worthwhile connection of any kind came my way. I kicked them to the curb when I discovered Medium.

Last September after I was long gone, Quora implemented a partner program which I signed up for and then promptly re-ignored the site. Based on my initial success getting views, I still averaged (and average now) 3000 per day. I thought maybe I’d make a few bucks by signing up. Yesterday, I checked my monetization tab: $9.97 over 4 months later! And all my answers (hundreds) are monetized. Not exactly a windfall.

In just the past week, I discovered Simily, signed up, and wrote an opinion about the site. An uninformed one as it turned out. Simily claims that they pay writers 2 cents per view regardless of whether that viewer is a paying member or not.

That sounded promising. All I had to do was publish old pieces on Simily, and then link the stories to my Twitter and Linkedin accounts (I don’t use Facebook). The first test case (or story) garnered 100 views in a few minutes on Linkedin.

Cool! $2 right out of the gate. Not huge. But again, promising. Much better than I did at the outset here. Simily only posts results once a day. You can’t see in real time the number of views on your story. So I waited. By the next morning, Linkedin said I had 200 reads — all of which obviously brought those readers to the Simily url. But guess what! Simily said I had 3 reads on the story and credited me 6 cents.

Maybe Linkedin credits a read if a viewer pauses on the story but doesn’t click the link. Hard to know. Or maybe Simily is bullshitting new writers to convince them the platform is worth their while. Either way, the bottom line is the same: Big nothing.

I’ve tried a few different strategies with Simily (including a canonical link on Medium stories to bring the reader to Simily). Nada. I have 7 stories on Simily, all of which are linked to my Linkedin account. One week later, I’m at 38 cents.

Bottom line: I’m not discarding my DoorDash hot bag anytime soon. You get the idea.