6 years since I really wrote here last. Truth be told, I haven’t written much of anything at all in these past 6 years due to life struggles, but now my circumstances have drastically changed in the past year and a half.
As we welcome a new year, I’m anticipating more changes, some of which include restoring good writing habits and being more active in the writing community. There have been many changes outside of myself as well, mainly, the internet landscape. From social media (most of which I’ve removed myself from save a spare few that require the least amount of effort and commitment, i.e. Twitter and Reddit) to resources, technology and websites, it’s truly amazing how much has changed in the short span of 6 years. Which may not be short to some, but in the grand scheme of things, is hardly a drop in the bucket. There are sites I’ve reviewed here that no longer exist, and it’s actually kind of depressing.
I dabbled for a bit in Substack last month, and I have to admit I was a little impressed at first, then began to realize that it’s more community based, and without any SEO features. That was a dealbreaker for me. I understand that they’ve created their reputation by being an email subscription provider with monetary benefits, but it mainly works well for those who have already created an internet footprint; as in, their recognition mainly came from outside of/prior to Substack.
If you’re looking to create your audience in Substack, it will take dedication in both creating consistent content (of both quality and intrigue) and lots of community interactions with their Notes and commenting to gather followers, not to mention that that’s still no guarantee for gaining paying subscribers. From what I’ve observed, quality unique content or providing teaching material (in the creative field, at least) is what readers subscribe to.
So while I’ve managed to get a few posts on there, lacking any real direction or motivation to continue, I am putting it on the backburner and using it for paid subs for fiction in the future. There are other sites to post fiction for a fee/subscription, so when the time does come, I’ll log my research on that here.
In the meantime, I have begun to use Medium because:
1. I lack the time or means to create an actual website using WP and google adsense. Which is probably a loss for me, but the biggest factor in all of this is I-have-no-time.
2. Unlike Substack, they actually use SEO. Much of the traffic on this WP comes from search engines since I’m not one for spamming my links every other day on Twitter or elsewhere.
3. While WP still relies a lot on self-marketing, Medium seems to take a lot of that unappealing legwork away. Granted, I’ve only started posting there in the past week (I’ll be posting a series of program reviews on there for now), but it appears promising. Automatic emails when someone you follow writes a post, with simple indicators on if the content is member-only or free is always nice to have.
4. The majority of Medium content is well-written and provides something of substance — i.e., articles. And I like that. Not journal entries like a lot of the Substack posts I’ve read and subscribed to. Which is fine, but unless I personally know and/or want to support you with money, I won’t be inclined to subscribe just to read reflections.
5. The monetary subsidies come from Medium, so while the profit margin may be smaller than what you’d get from Substack, the long-term exposure (and long-term profit) is far better and more sensible than for those who are able to spend a lot of time advertising and interacting with other writers. If you aren’t able to write in a month or so due to life or work etc., you can still rest easy knowing that one of your articles may show up on someone’s feed regardless of how old it is. With Substack, subscribers may languish (unsub) if you haven’t posted in over a month, because who’s going to pay for an empty subscription?
Initially, I didn’t much care for the non-chronological reading feed in Medium, but based on observed algorithms, which don’t seem too catered to popular articles, it’s showing related content to what I’ve recently been viewing. Which can be a bad thing (it’s mostly paid content), but I also haven’t followed a whole lot of people for my feed to show its potential.
Photo by Kaique Rocha on Pexels.com
Overall, Medium is my best bet for making some extra chump change. The older I get, the more I appreciate that time is money, and that I actually do have something to offer that the average person doesn’t. Even if that only amounts to $0.20, it’s better than nothing. I’m already severely underpaid in the art department, so why not be severely underpaid in the writing department, too?
ps. I’ve also looked into Vocal Media platform and while it looks appealing (oo, shiny and new! Fun topics to explore and read!), after browsing some of the content, it feels a little… amateur? I’m sticking with Medium and WP because they’ve stood the test of time… for now.
pps. The Jetpack integration and daily writing prompts on the WP homepage (it’s been a couple years) is actually quite impressive as well.
ppps. Now that I’ve gotten my degree, I can move back to my standard affairs after the dayjob and homemaking: learning programming and writing fiction and nonfiction. Provided my severely underpaying commission work doesn’t take up too much of my time. Because I have all the time in the world, I would also like to get into Project Gutenberg’s volunteer proofreading program.
ellDimensional 