Can You Get Paid By Social Media Platforms As A Writer? Probably Not

Social media platforms need engagement in order to stay viable, and to that end a lot of them have created programs that pay creators for the posts they make. This is why so many of the people out there with big audiences make so many posts, and try to draw so much energy from their audiences; because the more attention they get, the bigger the checks they're cut by the platform in question.

It's tough to make a living as an author, but chances are good you're already on social media to find an audience, get the word out about your books, and so on... so is this a viable way for you to earn a little extra money to cover your bills while still writing?

Short answer, no. For the long answer, details are below.

Trust me, I'd be all over this if it was possible.

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!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

All Right, How Do These Programs Work?

On paper, the idea makes sense. A social media platform wants eyes and engagement, so it puts money in the pockets of creators who get people to stay on the platform longer. It makes sense; the creators are, essentially, the reason so many people check in on these platforms where they will be exposed to all the ads on the platform.

So, how did this get botched up? Well, to answer that question, I'll go platform by platform and explain how they have structured their programs.

Please sir... could we have a little more?

Instagram

Instagram has one of the clearest cut lines among these programs. Generally speaking, you need to have at least 10,000 followers (I learned this from Little Alice, and I'd highly recommend folks go check her stuff out if you haven't already since she's being shadow banned) before anything kicks in. Once you get to that level, the site starts tracking what you share, and the amount of attention it gets. And when you start getting large views (we're talking the 100,000 to 1 million range) the site starts compensating you for that. Not much, but generally speaking 1 million views is worth somewhere between a hundred, and a few hundred, dollars.

Not nothing... but hardly the success one would expect for a viral-level post.

Reddit

Reddit is the place where I do a majority of my social media posting because (though it pains me to admit this) it is the site where I get the best return on my efforts. But the site has a program that allows people to make money off the posts... but not really.

So, if you can get into the program (not a guarantee), you are given rewards based on the number of gold other Redditors award your posts. In order to get gold, though, a Redditor has to spend real-world currency... so this is essentially a way for you to earn tips.

The problem with this in my experience is that most creators never get awarded gold. You can make hundreds upon hundreds of posts, get thousands of upvotes, and lead to long comment chains... none of that makes any difference if no one decides to award you gold. I'm approaching a quarter million karma on the site, and my account is 10 years old... I've never once received gold. From anyone. Hell, I've barely received awards, no matter how much attention a post has received.

Depending on other users to tip you is a terrible way to try to make money, especially when they have to spend real-world money to tip you via the site's currency. And doubly so when the translation rate is something like a handful of pennies per gold you're awarded. You'd be better off just telling people where to find you on Ko-Fi or Patreon.

Facebook

Facebook is second verse, same as the first. It has the same fundamental flaw as Reddit, because you can only get tipped for your content by FB users giving you stars, which is the made-up currency on FB you have to spend real money for. But unlike Reddit, where users can put gold on any post you make, FB seems to only allow stars to be used on Reels (at least at time of writing).

While there is talk about allowing advertisers to partner with you as a creator, that's currently a grayed-out option. Everything I can see at present is just another shell game where the platform claims you can make money as a contributor, but then just puts that burden onto other users, many of whom probably don't even know the effect their stars have. And just like Reddit, individual stars are worth pennies.

Just tell people where to find you on Ko-Fi and Patreon.

YouTube

While technically not a social media platform, it keeps cropping up. YouTube requires someone to have 1,000 subscribers to their channel, and 4,000 hours of watched content in the past year to unlock all the payment options. People can leave you tips through the site, pay for exclusive subscriptions, and you get ad revenue shared... but again, you need tens of thousands of views per month to make even a spare $50 or so. Millions of views is required before you can cut even triple-digit checks.

Also, to help me reach some of my own goals on this one, check out the Azukail Games YouTube channel where most of my content winds up.

Miscellaneous Sites

So, there are a lot of sites that aren't going to get a detailed breakdown, and a lot of programs I haven't looked into yet. But the trend of sites either requiring you to have absurd followings, or passing off the actual paying part to someone else, is pretty common.

- Blue Sky: No official program yet, but apparently there's talks to change that.

- Twitter: It's a cesspool of bots, fascists, and pornography, but you still need millions of hits and a blue check mark to get paid.

- TikTok: Getting a straight answer is nearly impossible... but it requires hundreds of thousands to millions of followers, and even more views, to make any kind of money.

If You Have That Following, The Pay Is Insulting

There's an old story I mentioned somewhere on this blog about Michael Jordan being interviewed. He mentioned that when he was a rookie player, nobody wanted to give him shit for free. Once he was a champion and a celebrity, people wanted to give him free merch, comped meals, tickets to events, and a bunch of other stuff. They gave it to him because he was famous and well-known, but the point he made was that he didn't need it then.

This is basically the same thing when it comes to getting paid by social media sites.

Because if you can accumulate 100,000 followers (to say nothing of a million), then chances are pretty goddamn good you can get enough people out of that audience to buy your books, merch, support your crowdfunding, or watch your videos. And while getting a little bit of extra gravy on top for having a big audience is nice, sure, this isn't something that's reasonable (or even possible) for small-time creators.

So by all means, if you find yourself skyrocketed to stardom overnight with people hanging on every word, go for it. But if you're looking for some way to pay your bills right now, you're going to have a much easier time getting people to buy more copies of your book instead of getting 1 in every 300 people in the United States to click that follow button.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business 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 sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Writing Isn't What Makes Writers Succeed

Generally speaking, if you're a writer, you would assume that writing is what determines the success of your career. Dedication to your art form, clever execution, quality storytelling, and even the rate at which you can churn out new work, though... none of this is really what makes you successful as a writer.

No... instead it appears to be how famous you can make yourself as an influencer, YouTuber, or TikTok channel, as Matt Wallace points out.

Yeah... it's like that.

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!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Writers Don't Get Famous For Writing Anymore

When you think of famous writers, chances are they're famous to you for their books. Whether it's Poe, Lovecraft, King, Gaiman, or dozens upon dozens of others, you know these people's names because of the books they wrote. Period. But even back in the relatively recent days of the 1980s and 1990s, things worked differently than they do now... and the things you need to do to be successful in today's market are getting further and further away from actually writing books.

I talked about this a few years back in I Just Want To Write... but Mr. Wallace really lays it out for all of us. Because 40 or 50 years ago the best advice you could give a writer was, "The best way to move copies of this book is to start working on your next book."

Sadly, that advice is for a world that no longer exists.

Now you have people trying to get seen on TikTok, to start podcasts, to run YouTube channels, and to do anything to get noticed in this media-saturated landscape we find ourselves in... and even when doing that works, and gets you attention, that doesn't mean it's going to actually get you closer to your goal of being a successful author.

Take the above story as an example. I wrote The Final Lamentation as a stand-alone piece of fan fiction set in the Warhammer 40K universe. My text version of the story, no matter how hard I tried to push it, or how many Facebook groups, subreddits, etc., I shared it on barely went anywhere. A few folks read it here and there, but generally speaking it probably hasn't amassed more than a few hundred reads at time of writing.

The audio drama version, though? That has 157,376 views, over 500 comments, and over 7,000 upvotes! Enough people have seen this version of the story that I've had folks recommend it to me, without knowing I'm the guy who wrote it in the first place.

Now, to be clear, I adore this adaptation of my work. I love how it helped more people come across my story, and how it helped boost the signal. I am remarkably touched by some of the very kind things folks said about this story, and how much they enjoyed it. However, making something like this production is both not writing, and it's something that is a far larger undertaking than just putting words on a page. It takes voice talent, recording equipment, sound effects, the right music, and so much more to turn a piece of fiction into an audio drama.

But, even worse, there's no guarantee that the popularity of a piece of media like this will turn into something profitable. Because even if someone enjoys an audio drama, or a video you made, they're not all that likely to go check out your website, or to follow the links you left in the production. They probably aren't going to type your name into a search engine to find more of your work, either. People consume what's in front of them, and then move on to the next thing more often than not.

Which leaves you making more and more content to try to pull in the audience, to let people know about your work, which rarely does anything to sell the books you've already written, but which also eats up all the time you would spend writing new books which you now aren't.

So What Can You Do To Help?

As with all my other diatribes on this subject, it really does come down to you as the audience. I've said this before, but authors are like gladiators in the arena; we could put on the finest show of weapons skill possible, and defeat three dozen opponents, but unless you all make some noise for us we aren't going to get any kind of reward at the end of the day.

We need you to elevate our signal, and make people aware of us. We need you to share links to our books on your social media pages, tell your friends and family, leave reviews, share our posts, follow our pages and our channels... in short, we need you all to raise your voices loudly enoug that the algorithm cannot ignore you, and it becomes impossible to throttle our signal because so many people are talking about what we're making.

And, of course, it always helps if you can donate to help us keep producing more work. Because the further we can keep the wolf from the door, the easier it becomes to put words on the page.

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business 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 sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

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!

I Just Want To Write...

It's that time of year again where we all recall Charles Dickens and his most famous tale. For those of you who aren't authors, you're probably thinking of that one book he wrote where a member of the bourgeoisie abuses his clerk until he's bullied into being a better person by three supernatural incarnations of the Christmas holiday. For those of you who are authors, though, you're probably recalling the tales of how Dickens was on his grind 24/7 just to make rent. Hosting public readings, selling his stories by the chapter, and braving cold winds and a colder audience just to try to put shillings in his pocket.

And I get that this is a reminder to authors out there that you have to do more than just put words on the page. I've been in the game for a while, and I know that shaking hands and meeting fans is part of the gig... but goddamn. I just want to write books. Is that really too much to ask?

Seriously, I just want to write.

As always, folks who want to stay on top of everything I'm working on should subscribe to my weekly newsletter so you don't miss any updates. And if you want to be one of the folks who helps me focus my efforts purely on making things you enjoy, then become a Patreon patron today. It seriously helps far more than I can say.

And if you want all my information in one place, I do have a Linktree now, so stop over there if you're of a mind!

So When Are You Gonna Start Making Videos?

Before anyone starts cracking their knuckles to leave helpful tips in my comments section, I want to lay out a couple of facts for you here. At time of writing I have 4 novels on the market, along with 2 short story collections, in addition to appearing in a dozen or so anthologies, all of which are available on my Amazon author page. I have over 100 RPG supplements that all pay me royalties on sales, and that number is growing every month as more and more stuff I turned in hits the market. I have a Patreon. I have a Ko-Fi. I have a Vocal archive with over 200 articles in it that pay me based on views. I'm active on Facebook, on Twitter, and even on Pinterest. I post on Reddit, I'm active on MeWe, and from time to time I even stop over on LinkedIn. I also run two blogs.

Numbers... it all comes down to numbers.

The problem is that, at the end of the day, it's just not enough. Not enough followers, not enough readers, not enough patrons, and not enough traffic. I get little gains here and there, and every now and again something explodes a bit and gets momentarily popular, but even with all the effort going into everything the little streams aren't making much of a river. At the end of the day, it boils down explicitly to not being able to reach enough people... but the engine's already running in the red, and giving it more gas just might make it explode.

I say this because I've had so many people suggest additional things to stack onto what I'm already doing. That I should start a YouTube channel, or get on TikTok, both of which require me to learn new skills and pour a lot of effort into making fresh content that isn't putting money in my pockets. That I should start a podcast, which is a long-form style of content that requires a lot of energy and effort that would also require mastering new skills and using different formats. One or two people even suggested I get on the zine train, since they seem to be having something of a resurgence.

I'm not saying this wouldn't work. I'm not even ruling out the possibility of trying out one or two of these options. But what folks need to understand is that authors don't have hours and hours of the day just laying around to master new skills in. And even if we did, most of us didn't become authors because we wanted to be on camera, or to broadcast our voices on the air waves... we did it expressly because those were things that didn't appeal to us.

It's like I said back in Creators Need Support, Not Another Hustle. We can produce content until our fingers bleed and our blood pressure spikes, but it does no good if no one's actually seeing it. You, the readers, are the ones who decide just how well-know we are... or aren't. So whether it's myself or another author out there who's work you enjoy, take a moment to do something to help us reach more people. Follow our social media accounts. Share our posts. Tell your friends and family about us. Get one of our books for them for Christmas. Leave a rating and review to help boost the signal.

Because you might be just one person out there, adding your voice to ours. But if hundreds of you all join (to say nothing of thousands) it makes a huge difference. This is true for big creators, but to smaller folks like me it can be game changing. So please, keep in mind that if you want us to keep writing, it's a lot easier to do that if we're not stretching ourselves so thin we barely have room to breathe.

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!