My experience so far.
About a week ago I wrote my first story about Simily, and expressed my hope that this new writing platform will succeed, given its orientation toward fiction.
Now, having spent a little bit more time over there, I can see some worrying patterns and user behavior…
- Slow growth of user base. There are 2090 Simily members now, a 239 increase since January 16th, when I wrote my first story. Technically, for a small website, 200+ new members in a week mean incredible growth but considering Simily’s goal — to pay its writers from user subscription pool — the ratio is screaming “defeat”.
- Recurring technical issues. The website went bye-bye several times since I joined last week. Completely — 500 Internal Server Error — bye-bye. They did send an email saying “[t]he recent growth in our community has overwhelmed our servers”. Well, if 200 new subscriptions and a total of around 2000 users break your website… and you rely on subscriber money to upgrade servers… it’s a cyclical issue. No one can read, no one buys. No one buys, no one gets paid. Including Simily.
- Dead groups. There are tons of groups in that community — but almost no interaction in any of them. Including the one I created, where I hoped to get people to collaborate, post their work, and support each other. They request to join the group and then… nothing.
- Missing critical features. I could not find a way to block users. I got invited about a zillion times to the “M.I.L.F.” group — Should I say “thank you”? — … by the same person. Declined and wished to prevent this account from asking me to join again… can’t seem to be able to do it.
- SPAM. Like I said previously, there’s a “M.I.L.F.” group. Need I say more? And no, there’s nothing cultural or edgy about it. It’s just stupid. How did they not take it down already?
- No meaningful use of the platform. I get new, random followers, but nowhere as many views on my stories. I guess it’s just people running around like headless chickens in an attempt to get their own followers via the old, and incredibly idiotic, follow-for-follow method. Before you say anything about my stories-which may as well be very bad — to get to see just how bad they are, one would have to click on them. I’d get the views and the $0.02. Nope… It’s not me — at least this time — , it’s them.
- No success stories yet. There is no “How I Made $100 bucks in a month on Simily” story yet. Nor there, nor over here on Medium — where most of the promo for Simily happened. My guess is that unless a decent amount of people start talking about their earnings from Simily soon, the thing is dead. And no, I don’t want to see the same people who promoted it initially praising the earnings system. No, I want new accounts, plenty of them, to say they’re at least seeing the minimal payment threshold checked in their dashboard. That’s $10. If tons of people won’t start making those damn ten bucks over there… why would anyone give you their fiction work for cents? They can self-publish and have a better shot at making a few dollars here and there.
How I feel about Simily now?
It ain’t good folks, it ain’t good…
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This article was originally published on an external platform on January 24, 2022.