What Do You Mean You’re a Writer?
Since When?
A Writers Journey
Since When?
That’s what I was told when, at Easter with my mother and brothers, I shared I had begun to write part-time.
To give you some additional background, I didn’t make a big deal out of selling my original book of poetry back in 2012. It was iPad only and no one in my family owned an iPad except for me. So, it’s not like they could read it. The book never had more than one or two downloads a year and I never talked about it afterward.
My family isn’t what I would consider close. We love each other and get along when we see each other, but we don’t text or call every day. Weeks will go by before I make contact with either brother and I talk to my mom every few days through text or a phone call.
So, when I shared I had begun to write, and I was writing about philosophy, they were pretty stunned. My oldest brother, Jeremy, wanted to know what I was writing about?
“Taoism. A 2500-year-old ancient Chinese religion and philosophy,” I said.
“What on Earth do you know about that?” he replied.
“Well, I’ve been studying it for a few years. Remember when I was learning Chinese two years ago? That’s when I started.” The rest of my family’s reactions were about the same. With the exception of my second brother, Nicholas, no one else in my family knew.
Imagine how surprised they’ll be when I share what happened in April.
Money
Yes, I know it’s cliche to write about writing. Sometimes it’s a little too meta for me, but as a new friend of mine, Robin Wilding 💎, recently told me, if you have something to celebrate then celebrate the hell out of it.
Let's look at Medium.
I was accepted into the Medium Partner Program on March 28, and I suppose I was credited for a lot of reading that happened before I was accepted. April was much better as I saw a 500% increase!
I heard earning $100 from Medium puts you in the top 6% of earners. I’m not there, but hopefully I can reach $100 for May.
The top earning article was no surprise.
My Relationship with Christianity & Why I Quit
For most of my life, I was raised in a southern Baptist church, where my father worked at. Growing up Christian in…thetaoist.online
It’s one of my oldest articles and, in fact, I wrote it before I opened my Medium account and transferred it. It earned $14.59 in April.
I also had 11 out of 28 published articles earn $0.
What’s not shown in the MPP earnings, however, is that I won third place in a Medium writing content last week for $20 (Thanks again Debra Groves Harman, MEd!!). I was a member of Amazon’s affiliate program which earned ~$9 off of one article, and I received one ko-fi donation for $3.
That brings my total earnings for writing to $92!
Views
I reached 21,000 views for the last 30 days. However, the major caveat is most of my views are external through social media. The impact of using social media properly can’t be overstated here. On one day, I earned nearly 4.5k views and 99% of those were from Flipboard.com. With such heavy readership from external sources, I launched my own website for my publication last week.
HOME | The Taoist Online: Philosophy Blog
The Taoist Online is a small group of online friends writing about our passions. This isn't our job, but we wish it…thetaoistonline.org
Note the sharp decline around April 27th which is the day all of my social media posts began to point away from Medium. If Medium isn’t going to use thousands of external views for anything useful, then I might as well give my readers the best experience possible on my own site.
Since the move, I’ve had 28 new people ask to write for The Taoist Online and I’m thrilled at all the support I’ve received from social media channels and personal messages.
Followers, Subscribers, and Referred Members
As for everything else, I slowed down on how many Medium members are following me. I only gained 216 which was down from gaining 627 in March. I gained 4 email subscribers which was down from gaining 16 in March. I did, however, pick up 1 referred member! (Thanks Andrew Pretzel!)
Expectations for May
I’ll have a pretty deep fall in May and have to work my way back up this summer. I’m leaving the country on a vacation starting May 8th and I’ll return May 16th. I plan post short form articles about the trip with photos and thoughts from each day or maybe every other day. I’ve only been outside of the United States once as an adult and I wasn’t writing at the time. So, I know I’ll have many thoughts on the experience and I hope you’ll stick around to read them!
As a special surprise for those who read all the way down (I’ll call you Down-Readers), I recorded an audio message to say thank you! Listen to it below.
