Tuesday started well. And then it took a nosedive. But in a goodish way as it made me to a major rethink.
As we were up early, I didn’t fancy breakfast straight away. It was too early to eat. Instead I caught up on some early morning reading. I decided not to feed the birds as the snow had melted and left the patio looking trashed. And in any case, there was still plenty of food, especially now that the snow had pretty much gone.
When I reached my desk I took my breakfast with me because first job of the day was the first space opera workshop session. The second assignment had landed too, and while I wasn’t doing the assignments, I still wanted to make a note of them. Assignments are a great starting block for stories when I don’t know what to write. Plus, they percolate in the sub-conscious.
Next job of the day was to share yesterday’s blog post, which I did seamlessly on Bluesky. And then I hit Medium…
Sharing the post was fine. Recently, though, I’ve started to also open up to 3 stories to hopefully read to the end, clap, maybe comment on, and so earn the creator a few pennies. But the first story I read was from the Medium team.
They’d suspended the payment program.
They’ve done this four times now since I joined them in mid-2021. And each time, instead of things improving for the members, they seem to have got steadily worse.
However, while further stories revealed that they hadn’t actually suspended the payment program per se, it turned out that they were investigating spam and bot accounts and were still trying to pay genuine writers.
Of course, there were links and other stories, and I ended up down a right rabbit hole. Some stories said that everyone’s earnings have plummeted on Medium, others suggested that the organisation was pretty much pleading poverty while playing the staff inflated salaries (quarter-of-a-million-dollar salary plus quite a few benefits).
When people read stories they do so in the belief that it is the writers who will benefit from their interactions. In my experience, this hasn’t been the case.
I wrote 2 stories off the cuff, one about my top-selling story on Medium, which has earned a laughable $3.06 in its entire 3- to 4-year lifetime, and one about my most-viewed story, which has been viewed 1,200 times and read nearly 400 times but it’s earned less than a dollar. (The links in bold are the free-to-read ‘friend’ links – I won’t earn anything from these, but nor will Medium.)
I went through all of my stories and made sure I had a copy of each one in a Scrivener folder. I went through and made sure I had a reference for every image I’ve used. I went through and removed every story that isn’t in a publication, every book review, which were in publications, and any generic blog posts that are duplicated there. And then I shared the free-to-read ‘friend’ links mentioned above to BlueSky.
This took the entire rest of the day and I didn’t have time to do anything else. I had a quick look at Substack again, and decided against it again three times. I had a quick look at Patreon, and pegged it for further research. And I did a quick search to see if there was anything else out there.
I don’t know yet what I’ll do with the remaining stories on Medium. My own annual membership runs out at the end of March and I had promised myself that I would only renew it if my Medium earnings covered it. That gives me just over 2 months to monitor things and maybe breathe some new life into the stories that are still on there.
If I cancel my membership, I’ll probably leave enough stories on there to get me up to the minimum payout. And then I’ll take everything down.
I registered for a webinar that will take place this evening, UK time, giving tips and information on running Facebook and Amazon ads. And I closed down for the day.
Short and sweet, but what took the entire day to act out only took a few words to write about.
Oh, how frustrating. I toyed with the idea, over the past few weeks, of returning to Medium, but I won’t.
As far as Facebook and Amazon ads: In the past, I found FB posts to drive traffice and convert well, and the posts boosted into ads sold fairly well, more than covering the cost of the ad and showing profit. However, with the migrations away from Meta, I doubt my audience is going to stay much longer, and I certainly don’t want to give either Meta or Amazon my advertising budget, small as it is.
I’m poking around in some other possibilities. I might do something with Book Funnel or take out an ad on a reader site instead. I’m giving myself a couple of months to research before I make a decision.
The amazon ad thing was always confusing because what they told us in the training session did not match the ad clicks did not match what they took out of the account and none of it paid off towards me. So be careful, and monitor what they’re actually taking out of the account.
I think Medium works for those who put a lot into it, and maybe those that have the right connections…
I have a writing friend who’s been ripped off through his FB ads and he’s been hacked. His new account won’t accept his debit card and he thinks his sales have suffered due to the reduction in ads. His experience hasn’t made me warm to the idea. But I’ll watch the webinar. I don’t have a webcam on the desktop, so I probably won’t join in much.
I’ve looked at BookFunnel, and there’s BookBub too. It all needs a lot of time and concentration.