It's the end of my first week using Coil, and I just wanted to articulate some of my thoughts about the platform, strategies for how I might grow some kind of following between here and Twitter, and look at opportunities to connect with other Coil users.

1. Creating and formatting posts

As a blogging platform, everything I've needed so far has been easy enough to find. I can write copy, format it neatly, create links and add images! Thumbs up emoji.

If I ever get round to recording some bad REM covers, or I decide to become a Youtube influencer playing Minecraft all day – I can embed that audio and video too. For now, I'm sorted.

It's not Wordpress, but that's fine. It's much simpler to use. I used to really enjoy the level of theme customisation I could achieve with Wordpress, but with functional power comes great complexity or something.

2. Where is everyone?

What I find lacking about Coil is access to data that would be useful to help me to start connecting with other creators, and subscribers who find my content interesting.

I would really like to be able to search for users I know are on Coil. At the moment, I'm searching for those users on Twitter, and searching their profile or tweets for a URL to go and read their Coil content. It's a bit clunky.

When someone follows me, I'd like to know who they are. I can go say thank you and follow them back if they're a creator. I don't have to rely then on other social media like Twitter to engage with a targeted audience. Or is that what other people are doing? Bringing an already established following on Twitter directly to Coil? I'd be interested to know...

3. Analytics

How do I know if the content I'm producing is effective or not?

I'm ending week one with 11 followers. Meh. Needs improvement, I know. I think only Coil subscribers can follow you, so I guess that means I've only earned XRP when those 11 users have browsed my content?

I don't know how long they've spent engaging with which posts so I don't know what kind of content to spend more time developing...

My best performing Tweet so far, I had hoped for better results...

My XRP tipbot account indicates some small payments through the ILP & Coil, so I guess I set the payment pointer up correctly. But it's not worth a wet fart at the moment. Can only improve though, right?

A dashboard that showed me some numbers about how many people are reading what content for what length of time would be really useful.

4. Connecting with others

So, as a content creator, I want to get paid. I never expected to be a millionaire on day 7, but I thought I would have made more than £0.07.

ILP & Coil payments on XRP Tipbot

So, if I only get paid when Coil subscribers are browsing my content, how do I drive more of them to my content, and how do I convince more regular users to subscribe to Coil?

I know, I know. If I could crack that, I get to unlock the secrets of the universe. I'm just speaking out loud here, and if anyone has any advice or tips, I would love to hear about what's worked for them.

I know what I do isn't everyone's brand of cola, but I believe that everyone can attract an audience on the Internet, however niche their content may be.

My strategy for now is to grow my Twitter following. Post regularly – try and engage people who are interested in #movies #illustration #popculture #coil and see if they're willing to make the leap from Twitter to go look at my content on here.

There's a real challenge with a lot of people to make them understand the benefits of paying to view content. We've all grown up on an Internet largely full of free content. So why do we have to start paying for it all of a sudden, they ask. Ad-free, quality content is a tough sell.

I saw today that there is a sub-reddit for the Coil Community which I've joined. It'll be interesting to see how many people I connect with there and how I can translate any of that good networking into better, more targeted content on here that ultimately increases my micro-payments.

I'll try and chart my progress in amongst my movie-related posts and talk about what's working or not working for me. Fail fast and make good decisions, I guess.

5. User feedback

As far as I can tell, the only way to get feedback on a post is by someone upvoting you, which keeps you on the Top or Trending lists.

That's ok, but any deeper-level of discussion about Coil content needs to take place off-Coil, which feels kinda counter-intuitive to me.

For example, I'd like users to be able to respond to this post below. I'd find it helpful for people to add hints and tips, tell me where they think I'm going wrong and what I'm doing right. All in one place where I and others can refer to as a useful resource.

I'd like to see more content on here from @Coil where they engaged with the community more frequently and kept them informed of some of the big items that might be coming up soon or at least scheduled on their product roadmap.

I hope this outpouring of thoughts is useful to anyone in a similar position. You can reach me on Twitter or Reddit and I'd love to hear from you if you want to discuss further.

Til next time, stay safe out there!