As someone who is trying to get her stuff into the game, here are my two cents.
I can not lie, in some way, it does feel silly on my end that I am writing stuff for free for a product that bunch of people are making money off. In some way, yeah, I am kind of ripping myself off by writing things that I myself will not get a cent off. And yeah, getting payed in exposure or getting noticed enough that I get commissioned by someone is somewhat to idealistic on my end.
But that really does not change the fact that that is my choice, no matter how unadvised it may seem. Savin and CO. make it perfectly clear what writing for this game entails, what I am giving up when I submit something and are more than happy to lend a hand whenever they can. At least from my experience.
And there are couple of ways I can justify doing this to myself. First, gaming in itself is no stranger to community submitted content. Be it updates (like those for valve games) or user submitted mods/fan expansions. Sometimes, like with TF2, you can sell your creations/you can not. Other times, you do not.
In this case, it is basically same situation as if I wanted to submit my smut onto the sites like Ao3 or anywhere else that allows erotica; I just have to hope that I will get noticed. Which this game does to some extent make seem more attainable considering your content gets mention in patch notes, no matter how small it is. And since this is the practice of allowing user submitted text stems from beginning of CoC, it seems somewhat effective.
But, for now, the biggest reason I am writing is because I find it fun and I feel like I can fulfill a niche somewhat. This is a hobby of mine and being able to share it with other people in itself is fulfilling. And with the lack of male and corruption content related to this game, I feel like I have something to offer. Specifically when it comes to male content since there is a specific niches within that niche that I want to try to fill. Be they monogamous husbandos, boy harems or non femboys willing to bottom. If my content is good and at least somewhat makes the small, neglected, portion of the playerbase happy, It will make me content with what I have submitted. If it at some point starts becoming to much of a burden, I can always stop. It is not like I am being forced into this.
So yeah, while there is a part of me that finds all my time I spent into this somewhat wasted, it is still my decision and the one I am currently taking great amount of joy out off. And the idea of getting some kind of notoriety and self earned allowance also ain't half bad of an incentive.