Trust Me, If Creators Could Afford To Promote Less, We Would

During October of 2022 I put together an audio rendition of my 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Warhammer 40K Edition. I'd been putting out little audio dramas all year, and I felt I'd finally reached the point where I could put together the right sound effects and appropriate background tracks for a lot of short, punchy stories that each had to hit the audience hard. It was the 4th video on The Literary Mercenary's Dailymotion Channel, and it managed to climb to the top spot for a while. It's still sitting pretty in my #2, and it's at nearly 2,500 views at time of writing.

Needless to say, I'm quite proud of it.

Something happened after I'd put this video together that stuck with me, though. Because once it was uploaded and ready for viewing, I shared it everywhere I could think of that it might be appropriate. Facebook, MeWe, Twitter, Tumblr, and by the time all was said and done there were even about 70 separate subreddits where I dropped a link to this video over the week after it went up. It was in one of those spaces where someone left a comment that I can't shake.

"I respect the hustle and all, but why are you sharing this in so many places?"

Regular readers already know the answer to this, but I thought I'd get back up on my tired old soap box one more time for folks who haven't heard the message. Because if you're someone who doesn't want to see creators talk about their articles, their videos, their books, or their supplements, we get it... we wish we didn't have to bother you with it, either.

But that's capitalism, and if we don't do this, then we don't eat.

Lastly, 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!

If I Didn't Have To Do This, I Wouldn't

While I'm still really proud of this video, I want to be crystal clear with what my promotional efforts got me, and what that put in my pocket at the end of the day. Because all things considered, I probably shared the link to roughly 150-200 different social media pages, forums, etc. within the month of October. All of those locations were in some way dedicated to tabletop gaming, audio dramas, Warhammer 40K specifically, or sci-fi in general. The total view count at the end of that month was 2,300 views.

What did it earn me? About $0.15. And given that Dailymotion doesn't give you a payout until you reach $100, if I were to keep up my best-traffic-to-date numbers, I would receive my first paycheck in about 90 years, give or take. Given that it took me something like 12 hours of work to record and edit the video, I'll let you do the math as to what that worked out to be.

For added perspective, if that many people had just read the article on Vocal, it would have netted me about $14. At least I would have made about $1 an hour for my efforts.

I literally would have made more money walking through a drive thru and picking up loose change.

Why did I share my video in so many places, this commenter wanted to know.

I shared it in that many places because algorithms specifically make it hard for your content to be located as a creator. I shared it in so many places because I knew Dailymotion doesn't have a lot of discoverability, but I cannot get paid on YouTube, so uploading my video to that platform would be pointless. I shared it in so many places because I had run the numbers, and I knew quite well that if I ever wanted to get a payout for what I'd earned that I would need hundreds of thousands of views, and nobody was going to find my video on their own. I shared it because I wanted to find people who saw what I did, who liked it, and who would make it worthwhile for me to keep making things like this instead of just closing the door on all that work and writing it off as a lost cause.

To be clear, though, I did not want to do this.

I don't enjoy the fact that I have to trawl through social media sites looking for fresh communities I don't post in yet, seeking out new eyes to share my work with. I actually hate the fact that I have to spend the first 2-3 hours of my day just doing promotional posts for my work, and for fellow creators' work, just to keep the wheels turning. It depresses the hell out of me that most of the time I have to pick blog, article, and even video topics that act as vehicles for me to sell my books or TTRPG supplements, rather than just writing things I enjoy, or that I think people might find useful. Because, like most writers I've met, I don't want to be a salesperson. I just want to write.

But if I don't promote my work, then no one else will. And if it doesn't get promoted, it doesn't get seen, and I can't get paid.

I decided to talk about this again because I am fully aware of the sheer number of people out there who get sick of seeing promotional posts on their favored social media pages from all the creators just trying to stay one step ahead of their landlords. You don't want to hear about somebody's new novel, their new TTRPG, their new blog, their new video, or whatever else it is. You're tired of the endless promotion, and how everything just feels like a business transaction.

We know, we get it.

But I want everyone who feels this way to keep this in mind. Because there is nothing more frustrating as a creator, and nothing we hate more overall, than composing fake, sales-oriented posts and casting them out into the pond over, and over, and over again day after day, month after month, year after year hoping to hook an audience so we can keep our bills paid. However much you're sick of seeing it, I promise you from the bottom of my heart, we're even more sick of doing it.

So if there is a creator whose work you like, support them. Buy their stuff, donate to their Patreon, their Kickstarter, or give them a tip on Ko-Fi. Consume the free stuff they put out, and do your part to help it spread organically. And if you absolutely can't deal with someone because they're making stuff you're not interested in, don't get snide with them about how all they do is promote and you don't want to see it. You're not telling us anything we don't already feel in our souls. Just mute their signal, and move on. It saves you from seeing their posts, and it isn't going to make someone feel more defeated while they're going through the motions of trying to climb the treadmill wall that creators find themselves on every day.

I Could Also Use A Little Help (If You Can Spare It)

If you made it this far and you'd like to help me, specifically, here's some things you can do!

- Follow My Facebook

- Check Out My LinkTree

- Subscribe to My Weekly Newsletter

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

- Subscribe to My Daily Motion Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

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!

A Lot of My Content is Free (But I Could Still Use Your Support)

Times are tight for everybody out there. With only so much money in the entertainment budget it feels like it's harder than ever to convince people to actually spend money on a book... especially if they aren't familiar with you and your work. And even if you have a big audience who enjoys what you make, they may not have particularly deep pockets to support you.

We've all got to eat, though. So this week I wanted to talk about why I make stuff that's freely available, and how you can still support me by consuming content you aren't paying for access to, but which can still help me keep my bills paid.

Got to keep the level bar going up, after all.

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. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

How Me Giving You Free Stuff Can Pay My Bills

I want to start with a basic premise that all long-time readers are well aware of. I am a professional author. That is to say that while I enjoy the task of creating content (blog entries, articles, RPG supplements, novels, short stories, YouTube videos, etc.), and I like knowing there are people out there who find my content entertaining, useful, informative, etc., at the end of the day its primary purpose is to make sure my rent is paid and I have food on my table.

Or, as the song said, being a rock star is a fun job, but it's still a job.

Ahem.

So if the goal is to make money, why am I giving away so much content for free? How does putting in hours of work and promotion for a product no one has to pay for earn me money?

If you've ever wondered, I'll do my best to explain.

The first situation is where the content itself acts as a way to draw eyes and traffic to a website. For example, if someone read one of my Vocal articles like What's The Difference Between a Fetish and a Kink? (Linguistically Speaking), or perhaps What Does Cannibalism Do To Your Body? they wouldn't have to pay a single cent for that access. Vocal.media, the hosting site for this content, tracks my reads, and pays me as the creator a flat rate based on my traffic (which is about $6 per 1,000 reads, for those who are curious). I'm drawing traffic to them, and they pay me for that traffic, because they use their numbers to justify charging clients for ad space, sponsored content, etc.

This is not an uncommon way for creators of all types to fund their endeavors, and pay their bills, while ensuring their audience doesn't have to fork over cash for their content. It's the same as how radio stations sell air time for ads, or how TV had commercials way back when. Or YouTube, assuming you're a creator who has a big enough following and enough consumed hours for the platform to agree to monetize you.

Brief aside, it's 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours worth of watched content to reach that milestone. And if you'd like to take a second to help me out getting Azukail Games to that goal, subscribe to their channel so I can keep making content like my latest audio drama, The Duel!

This actually segues us into the second way that "free" content can end up making money for a creator. Because as I mentioned in With Drugs and Books, a Free Sample Can Go a Long Way (a post that, incidentally, has a laundry list of all my free content out there waiting for you!), it's hard to convince people to take a risk on creators they don't know. Free content allows you to build that bridge with your potential audience, and to give them a chance to sample your work to see whether or not you are, in fact, the sort of creator they'd be willing to spend money on when they have it.

For example, if someone isn't sure they'd like a full fantasy tabletop RPG setting designed by me, they can read my gaming blog Improved Initiative to see if my tastes and opinions about what makes a good game or setting align with their own. Someone might be in the market for a new sci-fi novel, but they may not want to just buy my book Old Soldiers sight unseen. However, if someone reads my short stories Field Test or Waking Dogs, which are both grim tales set in the Warhammer 40K universe, they might decide they like my style and they want to give my novel a try.

In this case, the free content gives the audience an idea of the sort of quality they can expect. Not only that, but it builds a relationship with someone so that they see you more favorably in the future. After all, even if someone doesn't personally know me, if they've read my blog, watched my videos, or consumed my free stories for a while, they might start ranking me higher in their mind as an artist they want to follow and support. So when they do have a bit of discretionary spending money they decide to order a copy of one of my books, be it a novel, and RPG supplement, or something else that does have a price tag attached to it.

Creators Need Your Support To Fight The Algorithm

Creators need support. A lot of people read that as, "Creators need your money," but they aren't actually the same statement. By all means, I would love if everyone who read this became my Patreon patron or just gave me a tip by buying me a Ko-Fi, but support comes in a lot of different ways... some of them are even free!

You see, most of a creator's reach depends on the algorithm, and on popularity. The algorithm favors creators who have the most followers, and who have the most interactions. A Twitter page with a million followers gets boosted all over the site when they make a post, while one with a thousand followers gets ignored. So just by going to a creator's social media pages and liking or subscribing to them (such as my Facebook, Twitter, or even Tumblr if that's your jam), you are helping increase their visibility. It takes thousands of people to really make a difference this way, but big crowds are made up of individuals.

And if that was literally all you did, that would still help.

However, you could also use your own social media presence and actions to boost creators' signals. If the share something you like, react to it, share it, and leave a comment that's at least 5 words long. Post it in a group or on a forum you're a member of. Tell people about it! Because when we try to boost the signal ourselves, we often get ignored or shouted down. In some circumstances we just get outright banned. But you are not the creator. You had nothing to do with generating the content, you're just sharing it to the community because you think it's good, and you want other people to see it.

I cannot overstate how much that organic, word-of-mouth attention helps creators. Because it's something we cannot generate, and it can be the spark that starts a wildfire of attention on our work.

So if you have a creator out there that you want to support, buy their stuff, give them money, etc. But if you can't afford to do that, and you still want to help, use some of these methods. It may not feel as important as cutting a check, but it still makes an impact at the end of the day.

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!

"Ugh, Why Are You Writing That!?" Because It's What People Read, Champ

I've written a lot of different content over the years. I've tried different formats and genres, different subject matter, and different approaches. Some of it was well-received, and a lot of it has been ignored. However, I wanted to take a moment to answer a question that's been asked time and time again of me, and I imagine of a lot of other creators as well.

"Ugh, why are you writing that!?"

How I imagine most folks leaving these comments look.

Before I get into the meat of this question, remember to subscribe to my weekly newsletter so you don't miss any of my content! And if you have a little extra dosh that you'd like to use to support me and my work, consider becoming a Patreon patron.

Lastly, to follow all of my followables, check out my LinkTree as well!

It's Money. The Answer You're Looking For Is Money

This comment has been dogging me like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. It came up when I shared my gaming story That One Time My Bard Made The Dungeon Master's Girlfriend Jealous when someone demanded to know why I was wasting everyone's time with trashy drama. When I wrote Captain America is Chaotic Good and shared it around, dozens of commenters felt it was their duty to demand I explain why I'd shared a piece that would start so many arguments and flame wars in the comments. Even my article Can We All Finally Agree That White Supremacy is Bad? gets snide remarks from people demanding to know why I wrote something so obvious that there shouldn't be any discussion of it.

Ahem.

The short answer to all of these questions is as simple as it is obvious. I'm a professional writer, and when I create something I do it because I want it to earn money so that I can pay my bills, and maybe order a pizza on game night. And these articles, written in this particular way, got attention. In some instances 2-5 times the amount of attention as articles covering similar topics.

Is money the only reason I'll create content like this? No. Topics I find engaging, which fit a theme, which seem to gel with the markets I spend time in, and which I'll enjoy working on are also considerations that come into play. However, I labor under capitalism, which means that my art has to earn its keep if I'm going to pour time, energy, and effort into it. So while I might prefer to work on a sword and sorcery sequel to my novel Crier's Knife, put together an audio drama series, or maybe write an expansion book for a less popular RPG, I don't have the time and energy to spare to justify those things. Anything I write needs to bring in money ASAP so that I can afford to keep the wheels turning. As such, I end up creating content that is more likely to get noticed, get read, and ensure that all my bills are paid.

End of the day, it's basic cause and effect. If topics like this didn't generate a big (or at least bigger) response, and they didn't pay me as much as other types of content I'd prefer to be working on, I wouldn't write them. I'd spend my effort on other stuff with a better return on investment. But it's what gets people clicking and reading, so that's what I put out there.

You Want Something Different, Make it Profitable

If you, as a reader, want a creator you like to focus on a different type of content then you need to do everything in your power to make that a rewarding endeavor for them. Not just socially, but financially.

And I'm not just talking about throwing money at a writer to create the kind of content you want (but again, I have a Patreon, and I listen when my patrons make requests). If you wanted to see me write more Pathfinder Character Conversions, for example, then reading those articles and sharing them on social media to help them develop a larger following would mean continuing that series is now in my best interests. If as few as a dozen dedicated readers spread the word on it, that would create huge changes in my monthly figures. If you wanted to see me write another of my noir cat novels following up from Marked Territory and Painted Cats, then you could tell all your friends and family members about those books. You could also leave reviews, and get your library to buy copies, while also spreading the word on your social media about how much you like that series. That could snowball rather quickly, leading more people to take notice, read, review, and also demand more books.

Just saying.

Unless a creator is already wealthy enough they can just do whatever they want (and there's not a lot of us that fit that description) we are very likely to take notice when our audience makes it clear they want something. So if you want us to create different kinds of content, then you need to be the ones who boost the signal and get that other content seen. Because it's nice to want it, and we're glad you're enjoying it, but end of the day we need to be able to pay for all our necessities so we can keep the ball rolling.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you wonder why we wrote what we did.

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!

If You're An Author, You Can't Afford To Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

Over the past several weeks of staying home and trying to flatten the curve, I've been talking with a lot of my fellow authors. Just like any other group of people they've had to leave day jobs if they weren't considered essential, they've had events they were counting on to sell books at cancelled, and they've been scrambling to find solutions for their bills, food, and daily survival.

So in other words, writers are getting hit just as hard as everyone else by what's going on outside.

Which is why this week I'd like to talk about eggs, and baskets.

I currently find myself in a bizarrely unique situation. Because though I am still a mostly-broke, middle-of-the-road author who's had a modicum of success so far, basically all of my work was already done online. I only attend two conventions a year on the regular (neither of them as a merchant, as I don't have the cash for the books and the table fee), I don't have any local signings or events, and my fans (the few that I have) all know me from the Internet.

In other words, my career path hasn't led to a huge amount of financial success, but what I do have is uniquely insulated from this current situation as long as the Internet remains functional.

Now, to be clear, this is not a brag. I'm not suggesting that anyone follow the path I've taken, nor did I specifically lay my career out like this because I'm a Hunter S. Thompson-like recluse who doesn't trust the glue that holds society together. It's mostly a happy accident, but it's one that happened because I've had the rug yanked out from me several times before. The lessons I've learned from that are what I wanted to talk about this week.

Happy Accidents and Lessons Learned

As I've mentioned before on this blog, the first time I ever got steady pay for writing was when I was in college as a reporter for the newspaper. I really liked that gig, but it was very limited work, and it had an undeniable shelf life (paper didn't run during the summer, and I was eventually going to graduate). Rather than let the grass grow under my feet, I started looking for similar gigs in my town, and managed to land a semi-regular position with a smaller paper. It still wasn't rent money, but at the same time it wasn't nothing.

Pretty sure this is how addicts are made, now that I'm thinking about it.

While I was finishing up my schooling, I started getting tips from friends of mine that I should look online for work since that's where a lot of clients were reaching out. I eventually became a regular lurker at Online Writing Jobs (I swear that is not a made-up website, go check them out if you need work) where I found everything from catalog entries, to dating site profiles, to current news articles. From there I stretched out to other websites, until I finally found one (which I shall not name for professional reasons) that paid well, offered revenue shares on some articles, and generally let me step up into that adult income bracket.

For those of you who know the story, about ten years ago that employer didn't exactly fire me, but they made it clear that despite having written several thousand articles for them, I was no longer going to be allowed to work for them unless I earned a master's degree. This basically kicked my earnings square in the crotch, and left me scrambling. I moved to a smaller apartment, returned to several websites I hadn't worked for in a long time, and reached out to clients I hadn't had time for to see if they had anything new they needed help with.

This one incident taught me a very valuable lesson; never put all your eggs in one basket.

Over the past ten years, I've lost a lot of clients. I've had businesses shutter their doors, anthologies my stories had been accepted to close without giving me a check I was promised, and entire websites shut down with barely a few weeks notice that my work would no longer be earning me royalties. And while these things have never been good news, and I have had to recover from them, I've never received the twin of that knockout punch that sent me reeling before.

My Tips For My Fellow Writers

I will fully admit, a big part of it is luck. Another part of it is risk management, making sure that if one plate falls that my other plates wouldn't be affected by that. And a third part is just paranoia.

Burn me once, shame on me, and all that shit.

 As of time of writing, I definitely have one income stream that pays me more than others. However, rather than going all-in on that one stream, I'm trying to build up all the others to absorb a hit if a hit needs to be taken. It's why I sell books and RPG supplements, why I have affiliate accounts with Amazon and Drive Thru RPG both, why I have a Patreon, why I'm constantly increasing my Vocal archive, and why I still maintain a list of work-for-hire clients.

For folks who got rocked harder than I did by being kept at home, I highly recommend checking out the following options if you haven't already:

- Free Resources For Artists Affected by Covid-19: This should provide immediate relief and help.
- Online-Writing-Jobs: For those who need work with a fast turnaround, this site has listings.
- Patreon: If you have a blog, or you're willing to release regular fiction, you can mobilize your fans.
- Ko-Fi: Ko-Fi allows you to take one-time donations, and pairs beautifully with Patreon.

If you're looking for something to work on in a more long-term way (aside from just writing and selling books), then I would recommend checking out some of the following:

- Vocal+: If you have a lot of content looking for a home, and you want to make it pay, go here.
- If You're An Author, You Really Need an Affiliate Marketing Account: Affiliate earnings take time to grow, but they are more than worth the effort to build up your monthly streams.

Hopefully the resources and explanations are useful for folks out there! And if you or someone you know is an author who's looking to make ends meet, feel free to reach out via the Contact Me gadget on the page. One of the best things we can do right now is big-up each other's signals to make sure all our potential readers can get hold of our books while we're hunkering down and trying to flatten the curve.

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!

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!