Thoughts and Prayers Don't Help Anyone (Especially Not Creators)

There is a ritual we go through in America whenever something bad happens. Whether it's something big like a terrorist attack or another school shooting (and isn't that a depressing statement), or something personal like someone struggling to pay their rent or worrying about losing their job because their car broke down, we immediately chime in with phrases like, "You can get through this," "Hang in there!" and the ever popular, "Keeping you in my thoughts!"

This has become almost a Pavlovian response on social media. We see somebody struggling, and immediately throw one of these empty phrases out the same way you'd offer condolences someone who was grieving a recently departed spouse. And while it isn't something you're generally supposed to say out loud, I wanted to explain something to folks out there who do this as a knee-jerk reaction.

Stop. No one needs empty words and meaningless prayers. If you see someone in need, and your response isn't to do something to meaningfully provide that help, just save it.

Seriously, folks are drowning out here. Don't stand on the shore and clap!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

What This Has To Do With Your Favorite Creators

Generally speaking, the creators you follow are not supposed to talk about how dire the straits are when it comes to doing this for a living. But with the exception of a relatively small percentage of celebrity authors, YouTube heavy hitters, rock stars, etc., most of us who make art professionally are constantly just trying to keep our heads above water. And while we usually try to make our requests for help subtle (like how every YouTuber casually reminds you to like the video and subscribe to the channel, or how every blog entry I write has easy links to all my social media down at the bottom), sometimes we have to come right out and tell you what's going on, and to ask for your help.

And do you know what isn't helping in that situation? Saying, "I'm sure it will all work out, you've got so much talent!"

You can't pay bills with talent. Only traffic.

The issue isn't just the performative commentary (though that is part of it). Rather, the issue is that a lot of people see someone who's struggling, and then they do something that doesn't actually help, but which they feel excuses them from the necessity to actually take action to make a positive change.

There's a social media post about someone asking their spiritual leader why god made atheists, if he truly made everything. The priest responds that atheists are here to be an example, because when they do something to help another, or make life better, they do so not out of a hope of a reward in heaven, or out of a fear of hell, but because it is the right thing to do. The lesson goes on to say that when you see a person who needs help, you shouldn't pray that god helps them and go on about your day. Instead you should, in that moment, become someone who does not believe there is a benevolent figure out there who will reach down a glowing hand to lift that person up. You should become an atheist who recognizes that it's their job to help their fellow humans when they can, and to throw them a line so they stop drowning when you have the capacity to do something to stop it.

Rule 303, and Making a Difference

Rule 303 is a term that's been around for a while, and it has a rather checkered history to it. While the video below from Beau of The Fifth Column goes into some of that history, a lot of folks understand it to mean something pretty simple. "If you have the means to help, and the opportunity to help, that confers upon you the duty to help."

It's important to remember that we're talking about real, material help here. We're talking about action. Because thinking about helping, or wishing you could help, doesn't do anything for anybody. But taking action, even if it's relatively small action, does something. And if enough people do something, it can end up making a really big difference.

Let me give you some examples. If someone reading this right now wanted to help support me and my work, they could do any of the following things:

Things That Cost Money
- Buy a Book From My Amazon Author Page

- Buy an RPG Supplement

- Become a Patreon patron
- Buy me a Ko-Fi

Things That Are Free
- Subscribe to my Daily Motion Channel
- Subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel
- Browse through my Vocal archive (I get roughly 1 cent per every 3 reads)
- Subscribe to my social media channels (found at the bottom of the blog)

Take a look at that list, and think about your means, and your opportunity. What on this list could you do, if not for me, then for other creators that you like?

If you have money, even a couple of spare bucks, you could easily become a Patreon patron for someone, give that person a tip, or buy some of their merch to ensure they made some money that month. That is real, material aid to someone who is struggling, and you helped them. Maybe you can only afford to do it once, or you sign up to give them a little tip every month, but that is direct action to support someone in their struggle to keep making things.

Maybe you don't have money to spare. That's fine, too, because you still have the ability to take direct action to assist. If your favorite creators make videos, you can watch them, or if they're on Spotify you can listen to them. Hell, you could just let their playlists run in the background, even if you're not even in the room just to boost their numbers. As mentioned above, if they write articles or short stories that you can read for free, spend a little bit of time every day consuming it to help them get their numbers up.

You can follow this logic even further. Subscribing to a creator's social media, their YouTube channels, etc., weights their posts more heavily, sending a message to the algorithm that they should be promoted to other site users. Sharing their posts and content, whether it's making posts on your Facebook wall, leaving links in subreddits, or tossing out stuff into Discord, all helps, too. Sure, you might not have thousands of people eating up your shares personally, but you are still lending your hands to help a creator push a rock up the hill, and that's no small thing. And this isn't an either/or situation; you can mix and match whatever actions you're capable of at any given time to support other people as your means and opportunity shift.

This focus on action is especially important when you consider the frankly absurd numbers it takes just for us to pay our bills, to say nothing of actually saving for a rainy day. More on that in If 90,000 People Read This Article, I Can Pay My Rent This Month, if you're curious about a numerical breakdown by platform.

And since there's at least one person out there who is wondering this, yes, leaving comments on social media helps, too. But if you really want to feel like you did your part, please consider more than just high-fiving the drowning person's hand and walking away when you could do something to help us at least tread water for a little while.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Even Small Goals Can Seem Out of Reach When You're an Independent Creator

One of the recurring themes on this blog has been the disconnect between how the public perceives the earnings of creative professionals, and what those earnings actually look like. Because as I've mentioned time and time again, most people only see famous millionaires (Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, etc.), or fictional authors (Angelica Fletcher, Richard Castle, and so on), so they have an extremely biased view of what a reasonable income would be for someone who writes for a living. And even if they know that most writers aren't bestselling millionaires, they assume that if you're a "real" author that you at least make the same as someone earning minimum wage.

Truth is, most of us don't. What's really frustrating about it, though, is that the numbers a lot of us need to hit to make a living are so low, yet we still can't manage them except through years of sweat, and occasionally lucky rolls of the dice.

Come on, come on... it's not that far!

Before I get into the numbers, you can help me reach my goals by becoming a Patreon patron today! And if you just want to stay on top of all my latest releases, subscribe to my weekly newsletter as well!

Some Examples of Small, Unattainable Goals

Before we get started, I want to lay out some numbers for you. I live in government-subsidized housing in a small town in the Midwest. So, the numbers I'm going to throw around are going to be nothing compared to what authors would need to live in big cities, or pricier suburbs. Additionally, if I make more than $16k in a single year I would lose access to what healthcare I have through the state of Indiana. So I'm not even talking about thriving in many of these situations, just paying bills and occasionally going out for tacos when a new book drops.

Something to keep in mind as I start laying out facts and figures for you.

This is also why I spread my eggs among many baskets.

Let's say I wanted to earn $12k a year. For most people that's a laughable wage that's far below the minimum, but we'll take that as an example. After all, since it's so small, it should be pretty easy to make that, right?

Well, if I wanted to earn $12k a year from Patreon I would need to clear $1k every month. I have over 700 followers on my author page on FB, and over 1,200 and growing on Twitter, and there are social media groups with 100k+ people who see my work on the regular. So, in theory, it shouldn't be too hard to find 100 of them to give me $10 a month, right? or 200 who could part with a fiver? Even a thousand people who could each give me $1 every month, which is less than the price of a Netflix subscription?

At time of writing I have 39 patrons. I deeply appreciate all the help they give me, however, my monthly take-home support from them is less than $300. And even at the highest subscription numbers I ever had on that platform, I never made more than $320 or so per month.

Given there are people making thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month on Patreon, that goal doesn't seem unreasonable. But I've been on the platform for years, and I've reached out in all the ways I can, but it's never grown anywhere near the level I would need it to be at to make a living. You could help that by becoming a patron today, though!

Okay, but what about my books?

Let's move onto the next basket... what about all those books I've written? From my Hard-Boiled Cat mysteries Marked Territory and Painted Cats, to my sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, to my independent books Crier's Knife and The Rejects, I've got a sizable archive of stuff for dedicated readers to check out.

So what would it take to make that very small living just selling those?

Well, I make about $3 or so per sale. There's variation depending on platform, format, etc., but we'll use $3 to lowball it. So, I'd need to sell about 4k books a year to make bank. That's about 1k books per season, or three hundred and change a month. 10 books a day, give or take. And since there's over 300 million people who speak English in the world, surely it's not unreasonable that I could sell at least that many novels per day?

At time of writing, that's just not the case.

From my Ring of Fire books (two cats and the space marines), I get paid once every 6 months. That check has been consistently in the $120 range, which isn't nothing, but does translate to about 40 books sold over a 6 month period. Far as the pulpy sword and sorcery novel and the independent short story collection, I'm lucky if those move any copies at all these days. Doesn't matter where I link them or how I promote them, they're just a tough sell, and I don't have any companies backing me up on the marketing for those two.

Again, it's not an impossible number... it's just one that feels impossible to reach without the next best thing to divine intervention. Almost as impossible as actually getting people to read the books and leave reviews. You only need 50 of them for Amazon to start promoting you to other browsers, but the best I've managed to do is 25, and that's on the oldest novel I have out. None of the others have even broken 20 yet (though anyone who decides to finally leave their rating and review could make a big difference there).

What about all those RPG products you work on?

One of the biggest earners I have is the sheer bulk of RPG supplements I put out every month (all of them collected on a pin board for the tabletop folks reading this). With roughly 120 supplements with my name on them out at time of writing, one would think that I make all sorts of bank off of them. After all, even if my royalties are a small cut of the overall sales, they've got to add up when we're talking about such a large archive, right?

Yes and no.

While my royalties and affiliate earnings have gone up over the years as the archive has grown, we're still talking very small numbers. The largest amount I receive from any of my supplements is $1 per sale, and that's only for a handful of titles. The rest range from $0.10 on the smaller end, to $0.60 on the larger end (such as for Ironfire: The City of Steel that you see above). So after 4 years or so of hammering away on title after title every month, what does that add up to? On average, between $200-$250 a month. Sometimes it's higher than that because I was part of a big bundle or a popular deal, but that's the range I'm looking at right now. And I didn't start regularly earning over $200 a month on those sales until May of 2021.

So I'd basically need to increase the earnings on those five-fold just to make less than minimum wage. A feat that, all other things being equal, could take me 20 or so years of additional labors.

All of These Things Require The Audience To Act

One of the unfortunate truths about being an author is that I actually possess very little power to change my own situation when all is said and done. Because it doesn't matter how many novels I churn out, how many blog updates I write, what conventions I attend, or how I tweak my keywords... because at the end of the day what makes or breaks creative professionals is you. The audience.

Without you, we are nothing. You are the crowd, and our rise or fall is determined by your whims alone.

Are you not entertained!?

So if you made it this far and you want to help, there's a lot of things you can do. If you have the spare dosh consider becoming a Patreon patron, or buying some of my books and games. If you're broke (just like me and everyone else), consider leaving a review of anything of mine you've enjoyed. Follow me on my social media links below to help boost my signal, and share around any books or supplements you think are cool. Hell, check out my Vocal archive and give it some reads (since it pays me based on how many reads my work gets)! There's over 200 articles in that archive, and you're sure to find something you like and want to share with your social media circle.

And remember this whenever it comes to other creators out there who make the things you like. Because except for some very notable exceptions, we're trying to ice skate uphill and could use the help.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

A Mountain of Content (Moved With an Eye Dropper)

As folks who've been around this blog for a while know, I tend to keep a lot of plates spinning at any given time. I also run the gaming blog Improved Initiative, for example, in addition to blogging for clients, writing books like the sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife and the short story collection The Rejects that came out earlier this year. However, I've also been expanding my Vocal archive of articles for some time now... and I've got an update on what I've come to call The Great Reshuffling.

It's finally done. And for this week's Craft of Writing post, I wanted to talk about this back-breaking project that's taken me nearly a year to finally complete.

And let me tell you... it was a PROJECT!

What Was The Great Reshuffling?

For those who don't know, I had a pretty hefty article archive over on InfoBarrel for a while. It was never a big earner, but I got a check every month or so for my earnings. However, over the past several years the site just drew less and less traffic, which meant my work over there got fewer and fewer views. There weren't any other websites like it that I knew of (that is to say, sites where you could write whatever you wanted and earn money based on your traffic) so I just sort of let it die and tried to focus on other stuff.

Then I discovered Vocal.

And the numbers started jumping.

I've talked about this site before in both Want To Make Some Money Writing? Check Out Vocal! and then the updated post Looking To Make Some Money Writing? Check Out Vocal+ that I wrote when they launched their new Vocal+ membership program. The short version is that for every 1k reads your work receives (that's 1k reads total, not on a per-article basis), you receive a fee. With the normal, free site it's $3, and with the Vocal+ program it's $6. I'd been on Vocal for a year and some change, and I'd written a lot of articles for it, but I was having a hard time justifying the cost to pay for the Vocal+ members program.

And that was when I remembered I had a huge archive of stuff (some of which was pretty popular when I first wrote it) that I could just move to a new home. As such, I figured it was time to take my own advice from back in Recycling is Key To Being a Successful Author. So after emailing Vocal and InfoBarrel alike to make sure no terms of service were being violated, and that no one was going to raise a fuss, I started going through my old content, updating stuff that needed updated, and pushing it over to my Vocal archive.

And now, a little over a year later, roughly 100 of the best articles from that old archive have found their new home.

What Sort of Stuff Got Added To My Vocal Archive?

One of the biggest items that got moved over was what I dubbed my character conversion series. For readers who aren't regulars over on Improved Initiative, these were guides I wrote for tabletop gamers who wanted to recreate particular characters in their games. So whether you wanted to play a version of Tyrion Lannister, Guts from the anime Berserk, or to capture the essence of historical figures like Andrew Jackson or Harriet Tubman, these guides were a great starting point for Pathfinder players.

There's more on the list. A LOT more.

There are 68 guides in this series over at the Character Conversions contents list at time of writing, and roughly 50 of them were moved over from my InfoBarrel archive to Vocal. And they all got updates and facelifts along the way to include new content that hadn't been written at the time I first wrote them.

But what about the other half of the content? Well, it runs the gamut. However, some of the more popular articles that have now found a new home include:

- 5 True Facts About Dolph Lundgren
- Home Remedies For Your Cat's Urinary Tract Infection
- How To Kick in a Door
- The Vikings, Not Columbus, Were The First Europeans in The Americas
- What Was The Satanic Panic? The Forgotten Witch Hunt of The 1980s

And that's just a sample!

My current Vocal archive is just under 170 articles, and I've got a list of stuff I'm planning on adding to it now that the old content is buffed, catalogued, and ready for perusal. So if you're spending some more time in quarantine and you need some stuff to read, why not stop on in and see what I've got to offer? Between the new stuff that's going up all the time, and the old stuff you may have missed, there's quite a trove!

So go check out my Vocal archive today! And if you've got suggestions for more topics you'd like to see me cover, leave a comment below.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Don't Be Afraid To Find A New Platform For Old Stories

For those who don't follow me on Facebook, I'm currently in the middle of what I've dubbed The Great Reshuffling. For many years I had an archive of content on the site InfoBarrel, and it earned me a small be respectable check every month or so. As the traffic to the site started to go down, and maintenance became less and less common, I stopped posting there. I instead headed over to Vocal, where I wrote a bunch of new content, and found it paid significantly better.

Now that InfoBarrel is taking ads off their site, and more or less going into a state of suspended animation, it's time to begin the process of moving the popular pieces out of that old archive, and into the new one.

Don't mind the grunting... this stuff's just heavy.

This is something I've been steadily doing since about last May or June... however, this is not the first time I've been forced to do this. So I figured I'd share the experience, and what fellow creators can learn from my many moves.

In The Days of Yahoo! Voices...

When I was in college, a friend of mine told me about a website that allowed writers to create whatever sort of content they wanted, and it would pay them based on their traffic. Sometimes they'd even qualify for an up-front fee, depending on the article, story, etc. in question. I was always looking for some side money, so I signed up, and gave it a try. So I put up articles, short stories, etc., and eventually I got enough views that I was earning roughly $2 for every 1k views my work got. And when a new article might generate 10k to 15k views, that was pretty nice work for a side hustle.

I even put up a couple of the steampunk short stories that acted as the basis for New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam.

Which has the first few tales for free, if you haven't read it yet, by the by.

The original website, whose name I can't recall for the life of me right now, was bought by Yahoo! It then became Yahoo! Voices, and for a few years I kept building my archive and making what earnings I could on it. And, for a bit, it seemed like I was going to be able to shift it from a side hustle to a rent-paying level of earnings... of course, as soon as I started pulling down triple-digit checks, that was when the site sent out a notice that it was closing down and deleting everything in its archives.

Shit.

I detailed this at the time in Improved Initiative Needs Your Help! over on my gaming blog. But once I lost that archive of 400+ active-and-earning articles, I had to figure out what to do with that mound of content. Not all of it was great, but a lot of it had been pretty popular. So I started looking around for a new home to get it back on the market. There weren't any websites at the time paying a flat fee for traffic, so I initially started putting my old articles up on Hubpages. I was just starting to make progress on the pile after a few months when, as you might have guessed, things went south again. As I detailed in the Part Two update, no sooner had I caught my breath and gotten into the swing of things again than Google kicked me off their AdSense platform. So now there weren't any websites I could host my old content on, or write new stuff for if I expected to make any money off those efforts.

After asking around on some forums, I found there was a way to host your content on InfoBarrel, and to make money off the site's total take, rather than off your personal AdSense account (which, again, I no longer had). I'd had an InfoBarrel account for years, but hadn't updated in a while... still, when I logged in, it was glad to have me back. And for a year or so, it worked out pretty well as a new host for me. I got the real gems of my old archive back up, and started adding new content. Then InfoBarrel rolled out their 2.0 version, and suddenly traffic plummeted. What would previously have generated thousands of views was now barely getting a few hundred, and instead of a check every month I was getting one every three to five months. After trying new tactics and waiting on updates that never came, I threw up my hands and walked away. Now, as I alluded to at the beginning, I'm once again moving a lot of my content that's on InfoBarrel over to yet another new home.

Why? Why go through all of that effort one more time when it's already been through half a dozen websites? Well, because good content never really dies, even if the hosting sites do.

Evergreen Content Has No Shelf Life

If you drop by my Vocal archive and check out the recent posts, you're going to see a variety of topics. There's going to be life hack guides like How To Make An Apple Cider Vinegar Fly Trap next to silly listicles like 9 Super Powers Your Cat Has. And mixed in there you'll probably find some celebrity trivia, like 5 True Facts About James Earl Jones. There's also a lot of stuff about tabletop gaming, for those of you out there who like rolling funny shaped dice.

You know who you are.

The key to a lot of this stuff is that it's not going to go out of style. It's not movie reviews, where the film will hit big, and then fade into obscurity a week later. It's not a how-to for a car that's popular now, but which no one will own in the next 7 years or so. Most of these articles are evergreen, and they're always going to be relevant to a certain demographic.

And you know what I've found by moving them over? People are still reading them. They may not be reading them in the thousands, but my daily view count has been steadily creeping up since I started shuffling over those old posts, cleaning up the language and polishing up their look. It means my archive is steadily growing every week, and that I always have something recent (if not exactly "new") to promote on social media. It's mostly a copy-and-paste job, but it's paying dividends.

That's the point I'm trying to make. If you put in the time and effort to craft something that matters, don't be afraid of finding it a new home when the old one falls apart. Whether it's a blog that closes up, a publisher that shutters its doors, or fiction site that shuts down... you put work into that story. Don't just let it sink... there are people out there who haven't read it yet! Clean it up, slap on a fresh coat of paint (and possibly a new cover), and put it back in general population.

The results may surprise you!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Looking To Make Some Money Writing? Check Out Vocal+!

I like to keep you guys up-to-date on writing opportunities that I find, so I figured I'd let you know about one that I've recently decided to participate in. It's a site called Vocal+, and if you'd like the potential to earn some real cash then I would take a few moments to actually check it out!

How many reads was that? Of course, I'll get your deposit sent right out.

What's The Difference Between Vocal and Vocal+?

For those regular readers who've been here for a while, you might remember that a little over a year ago I wrote a post titled Want To Make Money Writing? Check Out Vocal! Vocal is a website that allows you to create content for any of the dozens of websites it runs, and it pays you based on the number of reads your traffic generates. Readers can tip you, and you earn roughly $3.80 for every 1k reads your work generates.

That's total, not per every individual article.

Not a bad start... what else ya got?

Vocal+ is the same site, but with a bit of a twist. While you can still join Vocal for free and create content that you get paid for, there's a new membership program you can opt into now. Vocal+ is fairly cheap at the moment ($50 for the first year of membership for founders at time of writing), and that membership gets you several perks that can really pay off if you're a serious contributor.

First is that it nearly doubles the rate of pay you receive on your views. For my two cents, that can pay for itself in the first month if you write as little as one article per week (and if something gets popular, it can let you capitalize on the explosion). In addition to that handy perk, though, Vocal+ members receive a bigger amount of their tips, and they have a lower payout threshold than traditional, free members do ($20 versus the site's standard $35).

Not a bad start, and there are several more features in the pipeline that members will get access to before everyone else does.

A Sign of Growth

While the membership package is being used as a way to bring new features online, boost visibility, and increase the amount of regularly contributing writers, it's also a positive sign of growth from Vocal. This kind of plan (which is going to increase to roughly $10 per month for membership after that initial introductory period) shows that Vocal is making a push to recruit more (and more serious) creators, and to grow its profile even larger than it's been already.

Which is why I'd recommend the folks out there looking to make some money give it a try.

It's working out okay for me so far!

I've been on the site for a year or so now (you can check out my Vocal archive if you're curious), and I noticed the change immediately when I signed up. I wasn't exactly paying rent with my Vocal traffic, but in the first few weeks I more than made up for my investment in my membership. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes over the next year or so, and I thought I'd boost the signal for any other writers out there looking to start making a little bank.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Want To Make Money Writing? Check Out Vocal!

Writing is hard. Getting paid for writing is even harder. Because in this age of instantaneous entertainment, where even the most obscure novel can be at your fingertips in seconds, it seems like more companies than ever before are trying to get writers to work purely for the exposure (as evidenced by companies like the Huffington Post asking to publish Wil Wheaton's work as a way to "take advantage of their unique platform").

Trust me, grocery stores don't take that shit in trade.

That's why I try to test the places I find that purport to pay writers for their work, and those who past the acid test get shared with you find folks. Like how, a while back, I wrote Make Money Writing (By Joining Infobarrel.com) after I'd put together an archive, looked at the metrics, and gotten a sense for the return on investment for work you put on there.

That's also why, this week, I'd like to let you all know about Vocal.

What Is Vocal? How Well Does It Pay?

To paraphrase the search results, Vocal is a long form social publishing platform where contributors are paid based on their personal traffic streams. Or, translated into common English, Vocal is a place that pays you for the traffic all the articles you write earn. All you have to do is sign up, write something, submit it for publication, and soak up reads.

Yeah... but how many readers do I need to get paid?

I've been contributing to Vocal since last summer, and I've amassed a small archive of my own. As such, I can tell you with some authority that it takes about 300 reads to earn $1. Not that I said reads, not views. People who just glance at your content don't count; they have to go through what you wrote, and actually take it in.

Fortunately, that's easier than it sounds. Doubly fortunate is the fact that Vocal has so many different sites under a single umbrella. So whether you want to write about sex (and put your articles on Filthy), or you want to write about games (and put your articles on Gaming), there's a site on Vocal for that. From dating and music, to politics and life hacks, there are all kinds of options out there. And as soon as you hit $35 in your archive, you can request a payment through Stripe. A few days later, bam, cash in your account.

How Much Do You Want To Make?

Most people ask how much they can make, but that's the wrong question for the setup Vocal uses. Instead, you should ask how many reads you can get for your content. Because some pieces I've written, like It's Okay To Admit There Are Problems In Your Hobby or 10 Signs You're Actually A Dom got thousands of reads when they first went up, and they've had fairly steady traffic since then. On the other hand, articles like What Are Charity Arcades? have barely broken 100 reads, and haven't generated a lot of ongoing interest since I put them up.

So, long story short, it's a popularity contest.

Fortunately, the more you write, and the more you build up your audience, the bigger your views get. Even if you only write a few articles a month, it's perfectly possible to make at least the minimum $35 every month. Two if you're slow in your marketing. As to the maximum... like I said, how many reads will you be able to get?

That's all for this week's Business of Writing update. Hopefully it helped some folks out there. If you want to see some of the different kinds of content the site accepts, check out my Vocal archive. For those who want to keep up-to-date on my latest releases, simply follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support my work, go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, or click here to Buy Me A Coffee.