Are you asking me how successful I am at getting my things read? I have no idea. I assume, however, that they are read, as I've been writing and published for 60 years, and right now, I've won the $500 every month since April. Plus, one of my pieces got in excess of 40,000 reads (not views) and earned over $2000 in one month.

And, no, it's not only articles in my publication. I write books, for Hubpages, on Quora, and sell my books a variety of places.

I have found submitting to other publications less than useless. It certainly doesn't bring readers. I have yet to find that sharing one's articles on social media brings one more than one or two reads. I really don't understand the point of it - unless one thinks a handful of reads is worth having.

Now if you write, according to SEO principles, Google sends you a lot of traffic. My highest articles ever, got about 10,000 hits a day for 3 months, and my longest serving article in the top 3 on Google has been there for nearly 10 years.

And, no, I don't expect friends to read my stuff. And, certainly, my writer friends (IRL) have never expected me to read anything of theirs. We don't even talk about it.