You are right in that readers support what they like, and when I say "wordsmith" I'm not ignoring non-professional writers. But writers of any level or experience often have companies as intermediaries--i.e., we generally do not have a direct reader-to-writer payment solution where there are no affiliates at all. And in many cases, the ratio between what the companies receive and what the writer receives is harshly out of balance. They can structure their systems so that if readers access the article through one type of link versus another, the writer doesn't get paid. Traditional publishing is known for their common practice of taking 80 to 90 percent of earnings (compare that to indie, where publishers take 30 to 40 percent). That's not because they do a ton for the writer anymore, either--we're expected to market ourselves, and in fact, publishers are turning down writers solely on the basis that they don't have enough social media followers. Paid accordingly is a little subjective, because it is hard to put a numerical price on the larger social value a piece of content brings to the public. But on a basic level, it means a writer has some predictability about the amount they will earn and can use that amount to accommodate current costs of living. Any employee looks for those two things when trying to determine whether to work for a given employer. Neither applies to many of the current platforms that are operating right now.