How I Became a Bestseller By Giving My Work Away for Free
A guide to help modern writers implement an effective earnings strategy
Every writer knows that you can’t rely on any one platform for a full time income. The most honest platforms are the ones that admit this is the case and encourage you to repurpose your writing in order to support yourself.
I’ve worked as a writer throughout my adult life. I’ve supplemented my writing income with revenue from other forms of employment. I’ve been a laborer, a teacher, and a small business owner to name a few. Over the years I’ve been able to replace my various forms of non-writing related income. Today, almost everything I earn comes from writing.
Success in writing requires you to adopt an effective strategy. I spend a lot of time looking for markets on platforms like Duotrope or Submittable. Submitting to traditional markets pays well, but it can take a long time to hear back. That’s why I prefer to write evergreen content. Even if the story or article is rejected, it’s still relevant months or years later.
This is critical.
Platforms such as Substack offer an effective way to harvest earnings from an article that was passed over in another market. On more than one occasion, my articles have generated more revenue on Substack than was being offered as payment from the place where they were originally submitted.
The reality is that it’s never entirely clear how various publications are funded. It’s wrong to assume that your articles are rejected because they don’t meet a certain standard of quality. Sometimes articles are rejected because they contain an ideological perspective that big market publications wish to suppress. However, platforms like Substack provide feedback on how much interest there is in exploring alternative ideas.
If there’s one thing that’s common in the world of writing and reading, it’s frustration. Writers frequently lament their inability to place a manuscript. Readers are also irritated by the low quality of the work they have to choose from. You can infer from these responses that there’s ample demand for a new kind of content.
The question, as always, is: How do I get paid?
Over the last year, I’ve grown my Substack email list from 70 subscribers to over 4,600. Last month, I became a bestseller. That means I now have over 100 paid subscribers.
I achieved this despite not using any sort of paywall. All of my writing is free, and I expect to keep it that way.
People often ask, “What’s the incentive to sponsor you if you give everything away for free?”
This is a very important concept. The answer is the key to adopting a more successful writing strategy.
It’s important to consider the reality of the modern writing market. Writers are essentially small business owners, and we’re still thinking along the lines of capitalism. We imagine our work to be a physical product, and we earn money by selling that product.
The reality is that capitalism has never been a good economic model for creative enterprises. Capitalism is effective for concepts like growing food where there’s a built-in necessity. But writing exists outside that model. You need food to survive. You need good writing to improve the quality of your life. From a market perspective, these concepts are not driven by the same mechanism.
What I’ve found over the years is that trying to use the approach of capitalism when it comes to writing actually works against you. I’ve seen this in the chatter on various social media platforms.
“If that person’s work is behind a paywall, I’m not interested.”
Unfortunately, there’s been evidence that paywalls hurt publications, and they only serve to deny the general public access to information they desperately need.
Several years ago, I created an account on Ko-Fi. I did it despite thinking that it was a fool’s errand. Why would anyone just give me money?
But I was surprised to discover that sometimes, if I wrote an article that really resonated with somebody, they were happy to send me a tip and a message of encouragement. In fact, some people have sent me tips in excess of $100!
This was a revelation! Receiving tips provides evidence that there is a market out there that wants to support creators simply for offering the opportunity to discuss concepts that fall outside the mainstream narratives.
The reality is that our traditional distribution model is rigidly controlled. I spent long enough submitting manuscripts to traditional publishers to recognize there’s something about my message that feels as if it’s a threat to established power structures. But this message taps into the primordial longing of the general population.
In other words, people want to read my content. They want to read it so much, that they’ll sponsor me so that I can keep working! I’m not selling a product, but I’m fulfilling a demand.
We live in an exciting time. Today, writers have more access to their audience than they’ve ever experienced before. Digital distribution models are still new, and they’re exempt from the controlling gatekeepers designed to prevent the free flow of information.
The audience is tired of hearing the same old story. They long for something new and exciting. More than that, they long for guidance on strategies that actually work.
The human race is tired of seeing corruption constantly rewarded and injustice going unpunished. They’re tired of being lied to and told that all they have to do is work hard and make sacrifices to reach their dreams. Most of us have been treading water in the same ugly patch of river all our lives, and we’re sick of the scenery.
The best part is that feedback from your audience is relevant and instantaneous. In addition to comments, I also schedule regular video chats. These give me the opportunity to engage in frank exchanges of dialogue that are immensely valuable. I also delight in creating audio recordings. I gather up valuable information both through the process of writing and editing for audio, and through interpreting the performance data once the episodes are published.
My work is free, but I am still very quick on the block button. The internet remains a hostile place, and the worst thing you can do is waste your time arguing with malicious, non-human entities. Fortunately, most platforms seem to be getting better at purging bot accounts.
Modern writers must make the mental shift to embrace the sponsorship model. It doesn’t have to be your only source of income, but it should be on your radar. For most of us, our work is never going to appear on the shelves of brick and mortar bookstores.
I’ve come to accept that this is an advantage.
The truth is that brick and mortar bookstores are going extinct. You’re much better off having your work featured on smartphones. Not every community even has a bookstore. Almost everybody has a phone!
Faced with the choice of reading something behind a paywall and reading something that’s free, most consumers are going to select the free option. Take advantage of that! If you produce quality work that resonates in the soul and you have the courage to engage ideas that are prohibited by modern gatekeepers, your audience will rally around you. They’ll provide you with the means to keep going.
It’s a perfect system because writers become motivated to pay attention to the needs and concerns of their readers. It puts you in an information pipeline that gives you access to actionable data on the true ailments that confront humanity. For the first time in history, writers are able to put aside corporate narratives and occupy themselves with ideological truths.
Aren’t you tired of listening to the same old celebrities repeat the same old ideas over and over? Well, make a change!
It’s a brave new world. All that’s required is to make yourself available.
This publication is reader sponsored. If you have the means, please consider sponsoring at whatever level is comfortable for you!
My CoSchedule referral link
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Effective earnings strategy--yes! Why do I appreciate your guidance so much? Perhaps you are reinforcing what I think is right for me and tapping into the way people are rapidly changing patterns of getting and giving value. Yes, I no longer go to stores after a pandemic taught me anything worth having will be delivered to your door. Yes, I unsubscribe when someone throws up a paywall without any alternative way to support them, no matter how good their writing is.
I have really been battling the concept of paywalls lately. I’ve asked many other writers and received a lot of different perspectives. Yours resonates with me. Thanks for the post!