Tips For Writers on Managing Various Revenue Streams
Get while the getting is good!
Image—A page from my sketchbook of some trees I did for an article
Hello Everyone,
Every time Medium makes a change to the algorithm, the platform erupts in complaints. I completely understand how frustrating it can be to see your earnings drop. I understand this because my earnings have dropped multiple times over the course of my career.
This is one of the things you take on when you become a writer. There are going to be lean times. That’s unavoidable. This is why you must always be on the lookout for new sources of income.
Yesterday I received a notification that my teaching license has been renewed. I pay $150 every 3 years to keep that license valid. It’s my insurance policy in the event that the river dries up completely. I’ve also considered working as a substitute teacher. It’s good pay but you don’t have to spend your free time fretting about your students and creating lesson plans.
Heck, maybe I was born to be a substitute. I’ve always enjoyed facing a crowd with nothing prepared.
The last time my earnings really took a hit was back in January and February (since then it’s been pretty consistent). At the time, I had the following sources of writing revenue:
Medium
Newsbreak
Product reviews
One time submissions
Various advertising opportunities on social media platforms
I have other sources of income besides these things, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll limit this discussion to writing. I’m about as organized as a bowl of spaghetti, but in this article I’ll tell you about my routine and maybe you’ll find something useful.
Medium
When it comes to Medium, one article a day is good, two is better. Generally I end up with around 25 articles a month. I generally don’t work on Saturday or Sunday unless I wake up and an article presents itself. By that I mean that sometimes I read a news story or I read a comment and the next thing I know I’ve written 2,000 words. You have to be careful about doing too much work on your rest days, your brain does need to rest from time to time. Go out and play with your kids.
I like it best when I have a bunch of quality articles waiting to be published. I don’t worry too much about when things get published, although I think your work does perform better when it comes out during the week (as opposed to Sunday).
When you notice that the work you do on a certain day doesn’t return as much, you might as well turn that day into a rest day because you probably need it.
No matter what day of the week it is, I always send myself notes when I have article ideas. That’s actually part of “rest.” If I don’t write down the ideas, I waste energy trying to remember them.
Newsbreak
I’ve been able to pretty much give up on Newsbreak, but it was a good earner for me for the last few years. When they first started out, they were offering base pay plus a performance bonus for articles. It was easy to make between one and two thousand dollars a month. However, the comments on that platform are too harsh for my liking.
In the past, I used to do a couple articles for Newsbreak in the morning right when I woke up. I considered them my “warm up” articles.
It’s important to remember that everything you write saps a bit of energy from you. Most days I work from 6-12. Then I like to take a 15 minute nap after lunch, and that recharges me enough to write some more in the afternoon. I work from home, so a greater percentage of my day is dedicated to productive labor. I don’t have a boss lurking over my shoulder that I have to pretend to be nice to.
I feel that giving up the Newsbreak articles has given me more energy to focus on Medium.
Product reviews
To be clear, the product reviews don’t bring me any money, but they do save me expenses and that’s just as good. For example, the school year is about to begin, so I’ve been reviewing notebooks and whatnot. A lot of the clothing the people in my family wear come from product reviews. Also, I get my wife a lot of shoes (because she likes shoes). My wife has never been upset when a box came in the mail containing a pair of shoes.
The most important thing about product reviews is to not put them off. There are a lot of times throughout the day when I feel like I don’t have the energy to take on a whole article, so writing a product review is the best way to be productive. The platform I work with gives me a task list, so I check in on that every few days to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.
In order to manage revenue streams, you have to be mindful of the jobs you have the energy for. Just get something done, even if it’s small, that’s one less thing on your “to do” list. That gives you more energy because it’s one less thing to fret about.
One time submissions
This is an important one and it has transformed how I use Medium. When my earnings went down in January/February, I decided to go back to submitting to traditional journals and magazines. This has two benefits:
If accepted, you are in for a good payday
If rejected, you now have a high-quality article to publish on Medium
Some of my best performing articles on Medium started out as polite rejections from other journals. These days I tend to get quality rejections (for whatever that’s worth), “We really loved this piece, in fact it’s much better than the garbage we normally publish, but the owner’s kid is the guest editor this week so we have to print his trash, you know how it is...”
No matter how successful you are writing for Medium or Substack or any other platform, I think you need to be sending out a couple quality submissions to respected journals every month. It’s actually a benefit that they can take a long time to get back to you because that motivates you to produce evergreen content.
Also, I find that sometimes submitting elsewhere puts you in the right frame of mind for Medium. Medium can be a little too easy. All you have to do is hit publish. You don’t necessarily have to meet any kind of standard. But Medium isn’t a blog, and you’re not going to do well there unless you give your best effort.
When I submit to a journal or a magazine, it helps me become better oriented on my audience. It’s good to put yourself through this every now and then.
Advertising opportunities
Meh... I’m doing this less and less. There’s a web page called People First that allows you to monetize your social media. I’ve also worked with Intellifluence in the past. But, again, these represent “bonus” type earnings, you can’t depend on them (but they sure help in the lean months).
Get when the getting is good
Perhaps the biggest key to managing your revenue streams as a writer is to not waste time fretting. I don’t mean to be flippant because, yes, it creates an enormous amount of stress when your revenue is down. What that happens to me, I remember that I shouldn’t waste my energy on worrying instead of writing.
You can’t sell worry.
So, whenever I find myself fretting, I sit down and start to write. I search out new publishing opportunities on pages like Submittable or Duotrope (actually I haven’t used Duotrope in a while... if you use it, let me know how it goes). I also look for direct sources.
When money is coming in, I keep doing what I’m doing. When money isn’t coming in, I change things up. One trick is to remind yourself that a drop in revenues is a challenge to be better. Find your resolve to meet the challenge. Make it so editors and publications can’t afford not to publish you!
“Reject me will you? Fine! I’ll just publish elsewhere, steal all your readers, and put you out of business!”
It’s simply impossible (not to mention reckless) to try to survive as a writer without always being open to new opportunities (potential revenue streams). Perhaps the most important thing is to practice tropism—you know, like the way a plant turns to the sun? In the case of the writer, the “sun” is represented by the revenue streams that are actually making you money.
In other words, don’t bang your head against the wall. If something isn’t making you money, then don’t waste your work hours on that (Note: this doesn’t apply to your novel because you write your novel in your leisure time).
As always, please leave your questions and comments below!