Wattpad
I think it all started with Wattpad about seven years ago. I remember reading something on Facebook about short story writers getting discovered by literary agents and publishers there and getting book deals. I think that is where E. L. James of 50 Shades of Gray was discovered after her Twilight fanfiction became wildly popular on Wattpad.
I posted a lot of my short stories there for about a year until some of my stuff got stolen and Wattpad refused to do shit about it. I think I still have an account there, but I pulled all my stuff off of there and haven’t logged in for at least a few years.
Tsu
I think the next one I started posting my stuff on was called Tsu. It was sort of a cheap clone of Facebook that supposedly paid you for content. They were way ahead of the game as far as the concept went, but they never really pulled it off successfully.
It was a great place for memes and occasionally driving readers to my blog, but not much else. Also, I think it is where all the crazy conspiracy theorists that had been kicked off of Facebook, Twitter, etc found a home.
At the time I was too stupid to ignore them and often got into long and pointless arguments with many of them. It took me a long time to wise up and realize I was wasting my time on those arguments instead of writing more short stories, poetry, or novels.
For reasons never really explained, the founders of Tsu suddenly pulled the plug and shut everything down. I think they still owe me $0.92, lol.
Steemit
This was my first exposure to crypto. I didn’t understand it, don’t know what a wallet was or how to set one up, and didn’t earn enough on Steemit to bother learning how to do it.
Steemit at the time I joined was really about the whales on the site trying to get you to pay them bribes so they would promote your shit. And the only articles that got any attention were the ones written about, you guessed it, how to make money on Steemit. As a short story writer and poet, I never gained any traction at all there and eventually lost interest.
Medium
Around the time I dumped Steemit I discovered Medium. This was a few months before Medium started the Partners Program. Like Wattpad, I had read an article about writers getting headhunted by literary agents and publishers and getting book deals.
I posted two short stories and almost nothing happened, so I forgot about the place for about a month. Then for whatever reason, I came back and posted about ten more of my short stories and that started to get me some attention.
I didn’t get the book deal I had hoped for, but I got invited to write for several really cool publications and was also invited to join the Partners Program when Medium first rolled it out. And if you’ve read my stuff for a while then you already know I’ve had an intense love/hate relationship with Medium ever since.
Vocal
I had really high hopes for Vocal. One of the things I constantly bitch about Medium is that they don’t give creative writers an equal amount of attention as they do self-help shit, tech shit, and of course the perennial shit “how to write shit on Medium and make money”.
I thought maybe Vocal would be a great home for all the creative writers out there that were putting out lots of great content, but couldn’t find readers.
After a while though, it became clear that Vocal’s goal seemed to be to get creative writers to subscribe so they could participate in Vocal’s never-ending parade of writing contests that you are very unlikely to win unless you spend a shit ton of time networking and promoting yourself.
I still have my account there and will sometimes throw stuff up there, but I don’t subscribe anymore and I never enter any of the writing contests.
NewsBreak
This one was a massive heartbreaker for me. In 2021 from January to August I went on a $1500-$2500 a month run on this platform. Like a lot of writers on NewsBreak at that time like myself thought maybe we’d finally made it.
But they changed their policy and that money quickly disappeared. I might have stayed with them, but I heard from the Facebook group that some of the more popular writers kept the same payment system while the rest of us go the shaft.
I would have even been okay with that if they had of been upfront about it from the get-go. Al they had to do is explain to us that their original payment system wasn’t possible and that only the top writers would make the cut in August 2021. The way they did it though felt like a massive rug pull to most of us.
NewsBreak 2.0 (maybe)
I have to confess though, I have read some articles on Medium written by writer friends that stayed with NewsBreak after the rug pull and are now reporting that their earnings are up again. Not back to the $1500 a month or more glory days of old, but better than Medium. So, I have been seriously considering giving NewsBreak another shot.
Hope everyone out there is having more success on writing platforms or with their other writing projects than I am so far. It is May already, but 2023 feels like my Writing Winter of Discontent.
