What if nobody pays to read this

On what it means to want community and a check in the same breath

I keep refreshing the stats page like it’s a slot machine. Maybe this time it’ll say someone paid. Maybe this time I’ll be able to call myself a writer without putting the word in sarcastic quotation marks. “Writer,” I say out loud, just to hear how it sounds. Then I take it back immediately. Who do I think I am?

When I made my first two posts, I didn’t even know what this app was. Two of my friends wouldn’t shut up about how I’d love it, so I downloaded it, scrolled a little, and on a heart-achy day, I just wrote something and hit send. I had two followers. Two. The overshare was supposed to get swallowed by the void. That was the deal.

But then one of those posts went a little viral. Suddenly, there were thousands of you. Over 6,000. I’ve been on here for a little less than a month and now I’m thinking things I swore I wouldn’t let myself think:
What if this is it? What if this is how I make it?

Because it’s addicting, the idea that this could pay for groceries, for flights, for little luxuries. I made a few bucks in tips and immediately bought pastries and matcha and called it «career success.» Now I’m daydreaming about rent and bags and maybe a life where I don’t have to contort myself into jobs that drain me. And I hate that I can’t shake that off. That I can’t just post for the joy of it and leave it there.

But I can’t lie: I do want this to matter. I want this to work.

And now I’m riddled with a different kind of ache, I have posts coming up that I love. Like, LOVE-love. The kind of writing that makes me feel proud and exposed and alive. And I’ve been thinking maybe I should put them behind a paywall… but then I panic. What if the people who need them most never see them? What if I keep someone from feeling less alone, just because they didn’t swipe their card?

It feels gross. It also feels fair. I don’t know.

I’m sure the people who post paid content love their words too. So how do they do it? Is it knowing your worth? Is it taking a risk? Is it just saying, “this is mine, and it’s okay to want something in return”?

It’s not like I’m posting novels or academic papers. I’m just talking. I’m just trying to be honest. I just want community.

But also, with the way the world is shaped, who doesn’t want passive income? Who doesn’t want to make money online? Who doesn’t want to attach a price tag to everything they do just to see if it sticks?

I don’t know if I’m entitled to charge for this. But I do know I’m tired of feeling guilty for wanting to try.

And here’s the other thing no one tells you: once people do start paying, it changes something. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a noticeable way. The stakes go up. Your drafts feel heavier. You start thinking about value and retention and giving people their money’s worth, even though what they subscribed for in the first place was probably just you being chaotic and honest at 2 a.m.

I want to be generous. I want to be brave. I want to be paid. I want to be free. And trying to hold all of that at once feels like juggling glass.

I didn’t grow up dreaming about monetizing my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t write my first angsty diary entry thinking, “Someday this will be a business model.” And yet here I am, trying to turn honesty into income, softness into strategy. And there’s a part of me that’s terrified that the second I charge for this, I’ll lose the very thing that made it feel good in the first place: the freedom, the looseness, the weirdness of writing like no one’s watching.

But people are watching now. And I love that. And I’m scared of it. And I want more of it.

And I want people to care. Not just in the invisible way, but in the open, subscribing, tipping, “I see you and I want you to keep going” kind of way.
God, I wish I didn’t need that kind of care so badly. God, I do.

And I keep coming back to this: maybe I can still write from a place of care, even if some of it’s behind a paywall. Maybe paywalls don’t cancel out community. Maybe it’s not greed, it’s belief… in myself, in this, in the possibility that art and honesty and talking-too-much online can be worth something.

So yeah. What if nobody pays to read this?

I’ll still write it. I have to.

But if you do pay? Just know it’s not just money. It’s belief. It’s softness. It’s another matcha. It’s another morning where I open this app and let myself think: maybe I’m allowed to want this after all. I’ll spend it on pastries and matcha and a wildly impractical little purse I’ll call “investment in the arts.”

Still, I hope the best thing I ever write is never paywalled. I hope the thing that hits you in the chest at the exact right time finds you freely. I hope the right words find the right people, even when I’m scared and scrambling and trying to make this feel like enough.

And if this never becomes a paycheck, if it stays a quiet corner where I talk too much and feel everything too loudly, that’s okay too.

Because even if no one pays to read this, I still meant every word.