I've circled around this essay of yours and read it through three times before I had an answer for the dilemma you proposed. Before, when I didn't have the hope of an audience, I wrote whatever I wanted without the opinions of readers or critics to spur me on or dissuade me.

Things are a bit different now. But, even with my most "clickbait-y" titles, I like to think I still tackle the stories from a place of wanting to tell the stories the way *I* want, no matter what perceptions or expectations the reader may have before reading. I think, at the end of the day, it's a matter of putting out into the world those things that you can still be proud of having conceptualized and created. And if money flows along that route...well, all the better to you.