Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, stanza by stanza, things are slowly moving along. I am still rotating in and out of a few projects, but this month I have mostly been focusing on distribution of my work. Specifically, I think I have finally found how to use Medium to my advantage.
The Importance of Publications
Up until two weeks ago, I had posted my work on Medium without any expectation of having my pieces curated for any publication on Medium. If you get curated, especially by a Medium-created publication, you could see thousands of hits overnight. But there are also many smaller publications--in fact, anyone with a Medium account can create a publication, build an audience, and find a niche group of contributors to supply a stream of new work.
By accident (or the daily Medium emails I get, whatever) I stumbled upon a specific publication (The POM) that I thought might be the right fit for some of my existing published pieces. So I read the guidelines carefully, as any good writer would, and submitted some of my work. Once I made sure that I had proper credits for my photo, it was accepted, and suddenly I had more eyes on my work than I had in the past year of writing on Medium. Getting into publications? Essential to success.
Get That $$$
Before the start of August, I had earned exactly $0.01 for my work on Medium. Not really anything to brag about, but I also didn't have to do much to get it. When I started publishing pieces in The POM, I noticed right away that money was coming in. Again, it's not impressive, but so far this month I have earned $0.10, which is a clear improvement from what I was getting previously. As with any website that depends on various algorithms to pay contributors, you can't see exactly how or why money is doled out, but there are a few clues.
First, I received dozens (in some cases more than 100) claps for my work. After seeing these numbers I immediately went to my dashboard to see my dozens of views. The views were still low, and pretty consistent with previous months (I have yet to get 20 lifetime views on any one piece). That's when I figured out claps. When you clap for a story, you don't have to just provide a single clap. You can clap as many times as you like, leaving a large number of claps from just a single view. Claps also seem to be important in determining which pieces will pay out.
Views seem to be much less important, but anyone on Medium knows that views have to be from a paid member in order to pay out. Free members who read it are still good, particularly when they like and share it with others, and it still boosts numbers. I admit that I'm still a free member, because I want to be able to pay for Medium with Medium--once I reach a steady earnings of $5 a month, Medium will get a new paid member.
The Road Ahead
As much as I like placing my poems in The POM, I'm still looking and researching new publications to work with. However, the fact that some of these publications have locked their submission guidelines behind a paywall is very frustrating--and lucrative, probably, which is kind of shady, though completely within the TOS. I'm still creating new work and I want to diversify where that work ends up. You never know--maybe one of these days I'll be in the mood to run my own Medium publication.
Planning to Plan
Aside from all the new things I discovered with Medium, I've also been looking into starting a bullet journal, rather than trying to manage a calendar, planner, to-do list, and other stuff. I think I can get around the idea of making it pretty with spectacular artistic talent by using a lot of stickers, stencils, and my very favorite skill--collage. I have a stack of Vogues in my closet; might as well put them to good use.
New Flavors
Lastly, what gets labeled as totally random: I tried a couple of new flavors today. Both good, but I wouldn't try them at the same time.
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