I am So Incredibly Frustrated

I am getting so frustrated with my freelance writing lately. In fact, I have picked up extra shifts at my regular job (as a veterinary technician). This serves two purposes, I haven’t been able to write, and I have money coming in.

Let me say that I am in no means new to freelance writing. I have been writing part-time since my children were little. They are now ten and eleven years old, so I am not new to this. I bought a tablet and then a laptop so I could continue to write while we were outside playing in the sandbox, at the park, and wherever we ended up!

However, I spent most of my time at one site, BlogMutt. There was plenty of topics to write about, and plenty of work that needed to be done, no matter when I was able to sign in and get some work done. However, some changes came, including a name, and I haven't been able to sell as much there as I used to.

So, I have done what I should have done years ago. I have looked for many other places to write. I started with Constant-Content, where I basically put my writing that got declined. I discovered a few other places, such as WriterAccess. Some others I found wouldn’t work for me and my schedule.

About a year ago (give or take a few months), I discovered Vocal, where I could write whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and get paid to do so. It was great at the beginning, but then the bonuses ended, and I only got a few cents every month.

So, I found Medium. I put everything that I had written on Vocal and then continued to add more as often as I could. I was heading steadily toward the one-hundred-dollar club, but the last few months have shown a downward trend. I will be lucky if I bring home fifteen bucks this month.

At this point, I heard about Newsbreak. I thought that I would give it a whirl, so I started putting some of my Medium articles on there. This month, I have already hit the one-hundred-dollar club, only to receive a notice that my account was terminated.

I had three strikes, and I was done. This pisses me off completely. Seriously, there isn’t much to help you get started, and it isn’t hard to get a strike.

My first strike was that I gave legal advice. I simply wrote that you should not go through a divorce without a lawyer. I may also have talked about mediation in the article.

I have decided that I am going to try to fight this strike.

My second strike was for plagiarism. The worst part is that I plagiarized myself! I forgot to put the notice at the bottom saying that this was previously published on Medium.

So, I basically got a strike for nothing. I never even published this on Newsbreak. It is just a strike!

I now decided to fight this one too!

My latest strike and the one that got me kicked off of the platform involves a story about dealing with uneven breasts. They flagged it for nudity, when it is simply an article about health and self-esteem. Many women have uneven breasts, and they are uncomfortable with their bodies. It has nothing to do with nudity or even sex! Yet, it got me kicked off the platform.

So, yes, I am going to fight this too.

Hopefully, I will be able to write for the platform again. I just wish that they came you some sort of notice when you screw up, instead of giving up on you right away!

If not, I am losing the income that finally started to take off, which really upsets me. I finally felt like I could make some money with my scattered writing!

Even worse, I just spent two hours scheduling social media posts to get my work out there. If I lose my Newsbreak account, I am going to have to start over! I will have to delete all of them and redo them with links to my Medium stories.

I will let you know what happens, but I am not hopeful at all!

Previously published on Medium.