After reading a lot of articles recently, I noticed there are basically two types of donation farming.
The first type is simple:
people openly ask for gold, materials, or tips and the entire article is basically:
“please help me progress faster.”
The second type is different.
People write memes, war reports, funny situations, or random entertaining posts and donations come more naturally from readers enjoying the article itself.
At first I thought begging posts would always perform better because the goal is direct and obvious.
But after some time I started questioning if that’s actually true long-term.
Because realistically, even 100–150 gold earned over several days is not some game-changing amount for established players. That’s roughly enough for around 85 steel or concrete:
two level 3 automations
or part of a third company
For experienced players that’s almost nothing.
But for newer players it actually matters a lot because early progression is slow. Especially if someone didn’t optimize skill points correctly at the start, the difference becomes even more noticeable. A small amount of extra gold can easily remove several days of waiting during early economy development.
The interesting thing is that entertaining articles seem to build better reactions from the community. People comment more, interact more, subscribe more, and sometimes donate simply because the post was funny or relatable.
Begging posts can still work, but after reading many of them they all start feeling annoying.
So now I’m honestly wondering:
If two players spend weeks writing articles, who actually ends up progressing faster in the long run?
the player constantly asking directly for donations
or the player building attention through entertaining content people genuinely enjoy reading?