Spinning Wheels

So you say you’re a new writer. How’s that going? Daunting, isn’t it? I hear you. I’m about a year and one month into my writing journey. The amount of information out there is mind-boggling. The quality of the information and advice is mixed, but more than that, the people writing it forget who they’re writing for. That is extremely frustrating. I’m going to give you some valuable information that won’t cost you anything. It’s coming from a very new writer who would like to see some improvements in the field. I promise to be honest and straightforward with you, so you can make informed decisions.

We live in a world where everything is fee-for-service and à la carte. This is maddening. I take issue with a world that wants to make a buck off every person it engages with. Writing is a trove of people and entities offering amazing things for a small fee. The problem is simple. Add it all up, and you’ll go bankrupt. This is especially true in the writing industry, where we are enticed by tools and entities that claim to have all the answers. I’ll save you some time. They don’t.

The saying “you have to spend money to make money” was probably coined by a writer.

It is, in some respects, true, but the way we are being raked these days takes advantage of our desire to write something meaningful and our need to earn income from our work. Let’s start with the basics.

Writing does not cost much. It’s a good computer you probably already have, and paper. The real muscle is your brain, and that is free. The second you look for a place to hang your hat, the charges and fees come rolling in.

Let’s start with writing platforms, or rather, platforms that allow you to publish your work and offer a clearinghouse to do it all in. I have four regular places where I write daily. Let me share my experience with each.

Vocal Media, my personal favorite, is a nice place to start writing if you decide to write and post daily pieces. It’s not free. They charge $99 per year for their Vocal+ membership and offer a free baseline membership. This was the first place I actually paid to be part of. Why? Because it is possible to make good money on it, provided people, and I mean anyone, member or not, read your work. That is plain and simple. They also have monthly contests. A slew of them, offering prompts for poetry, essays, short stories, and so on. The site clearly gives you the parameters for each contest, making it a great experience. Kudos to them. The payout? First prize is $200, second prize is $15, and an honorable mention is $5. Those are very real numbers. That, plus whatever people reading your content makes you, is a positive.

The way you make money from readers is also straightforward. You get paid based on how long each reader spends on your page, as indicated by their scrolling to the end of the work. On the free plan, you make $3.80 per 1000 reads. On Vocal+, that goes up to $6 per 1,000 readers. There is also a tip feature, where a reader can give you a tip for a job well done. The site is entirely free for readers. Period. So far, so good.

Vocal’s negatives are small compared to its income potential. Vocal has limitations in its interface with social media platforms. That means that when you post a story that is accepted and published on Vocal’s platform, you are free to share it across all of your social media. In fact, it’s encouraged.

If you’re sharing it on Facebook and X, it’s so simple a cat could do it. You click share, select who you’ll share with, and it does all the heavy lifting. It opens the site and posts a link to your story with the image you used. It’s clean. At that point, all you have to do is add a couple of hashtags that fit your work and hit post. For all other sites, copy the link from your story and paste it into each site. Most sites will immediately display the article and image, like a direct share. Some won’t, and that’s the downside.

For social media sites like Lemon8, TikTok, Gab, and Instagram, you will need the image ready to upload after you paste the link. From there, it is as simple as the two above. Hit post, and you are done.

All in all, this is the best place for a new writer to start their journey. It feels good to see your story accepted, and navigating the site is a pleasure. They rarely decline a piece, and any decline is clearly stated. As long as you read the platform’s policies, you will succeed in staying within the parameters. I would begin here. Hands down.

Next is Substack. Substack is a conundrum. It is free, but it is also one of the most difficult to gain traction in. Making money on here is possible, but only with a paid subscription to your page. As a new writer, that may take a while. I guess since it’s free, that’s okay. If I had to pay for that, I would have left long ago. Readers can access your work for free as well, which is nice when you share your post’s link to potential subscribers on your socials.

Substack is multifaceted as well. It is an all-encompassing meeting place for writers. You write, post, and then move on. There is no yay or nay about your work. You write, and you post it. It is multifaceted because it has publications, publishers, editors, and groups of all kinds for your personal writing niche. The potential for your pieces to be seen is there. I do believe that once you have some subscribers and a flow of traffic, it will be worth the time.

I do have a few issues with Substack, however. There is not much support for how it all works or how their algorithms are structured. That makes it very hard to figure out an angle to make all of your writing dreams come true.

I also have an issue with the fact that any publication that issues a submission prompt requires you to have a membership with them at a cost of $80 or more per year. That, my dear newbies, like me, will add up. When you have nothing coming in, paying that for every publication you want to write a story for will put you in the poorhouse. I really don’t know what reality a publication is living in when they charge you monthly for the opportunity to write something for them, which might be declined to begin with. I guess none of them remembers what it was like when they started.

For me, publications are already making money from subscribers who want to read their content. Writing for them makes them money, especially if it is a story that gets noticed. And then they want to charge you for that on top of it. Nope. That is a hard pass for me. If I see a prompt, go to the guidelines, and it says only subscribers may submit, I’m out. Move on. There are so many publications that will never ask you for a dime. Find those and work with them.

Without getting roped into the black hole of submission fees, you will not be able to keep adding to your negative income. Regularly posting and sharing your written articles is a clean process. The interface with socials is easy, and most of them are a simple click-and-post action. There are no limits on how much you can post, as far as I have experienced, unlike some platforms. So, I say give it a go and steer clear of subscriptions for submitting publications, at least until you have income that affords you that luxury.

Patreon, oh Patreon. How does anyone make money there? Patreon is $50 a year. Not too bad. That is not too bad, if the site were not so incredibly hard to figure out. Writing and posting your work is simple. It is like most others. You write, you post. You can charge for monthly or yearly subscriptions; you can have multiple subscriber tiers; you can charge for each post, a collection of posts, or just leave access to any part of your page free. But then you are left in an echo chamber.

You either need an existing network of followers you can import to Patreon to make money, or you need to be a video creator. Writing on this platform is a dud. They have no algorithm that I can see. Until the past couple of months, you had to have two sides to your account: your member side and your creator side. And never the twain shall meet. It was so effective and fun to deal with that they had to do away with that system. Now you have one account with just one side.

Creating a stream of income on Patreon is like pulling teeth. I believe you have to do your own networking and marketing because nothing gets your written pieces seen. At all! There are no algorithms to speak of. I have had Patreon since October 2025. In that time, I had two followers, and I am not sure they are even real. That is it. I have repeatedly asked for help getting my work out there, and that is where I stay. Nowhere.

They have horrible support, and often they don’t know how to help you. To make matters worse, any of your issues will be handled by a plethora of people with the same lack of knowledge. The icing on the cake is that every time you speak (and I use speak loosely) to anyone from support, you will undoubtedly have to retell the whole story again. You may just write an article on what is going on and cut and paste it whenever they contact you, which is unpredictable as well. You will never speak to a soul, by the way. It is all very impersonal and email-oriented. Please stand by while they cue an AI bot to do the work, as everyone else has. Ugh!

I will not be renewing Patreon this October, especially if nothing changes. They recently created something called Quips. It’s a short ad that gives people a glimpse of your posts. You have to create it and share it. You, you, you. There is no help from them. It is just more work for the writer.

It was rolled out to help subscribers get traction on their pages, and I am sure they know subscribers are complaining about their site. They sent me a survey about the quip addition, and I had to be honest. I told them that if they know there is a visibility issue for the creator, so much so that they created quips to help them get out there, why could they not just do that with each post? Period. It all just seems like redundancy after redundancy. There is no good juju here on Patreon. I anticipate my exit in October. I don’t know any starving writer who can afford to throw away money or time if they have none coming in. So that is Patreon.

Now on to Medium. Medium is similar to Vocal in that you can write and post every day on your own page. Simple. Medium also offers a way to earn money. That is called the Partner program, aptly named because you have a partnership with them and they with you. The membership costs $50 a year. The Partner program is free, but it is not easy to get into. They judge your body of work, so you need to have one before you submit for approval to be added to it. That usually means you need to write a lot so they can assess your talent, see if it is marketable, and consider whether it's potentially profitable for them. That is good business sense. I applied a couple of times before I got there. The odds are never in your favor. All in all, it is a good place to put your talents.

There are large swaths of publications, publishers, editors, and so on. Win, win. Once monetized, there are many resources at your fingertips to help you advance your career. There is also a decent level of support. Medium and its publications are well-known and very active in the writing community. All of this adds up to good potential for study income. It takes time, though, so be patient with the process. It can work if you stick it out.

There isn't much to criticize about Medium. My experience with them has been pretty good. However, there are some things that need improvement.

First, it is not easy to find publications that accept submissions. This is because their navigation system is wonky at best and counterintuitive. You have to find their post on their site, called Medium’s Huge List of Publications Accepting Submissions. That doesn’t take you where you are hoping it will. It doesn’t open a window with a search bar for what you want to see. You can search by topic if you have one in mind, or search for a publication if you already know its name. If you don’t, be prepared to jump into the labyrinth; you will never come out of it.

That’s because the list is presented in Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness style. It is like reading a never-ending explosion of mashed potatoes. There is no rhyme or reason. It has no intuitive flow. Random is the kindest way to say it, but it really is a maddening road to the ozone.

I have no idea who put it together or how. It is not linear thinking, to be sure. It will come up with some random publication, say a cooking publication, and the next one could be a metaphysical tantric yoga publication, followed by a children’s stories publication, followed by a scientific one, when all you are looking for is poetry publications. It’s nuts. I have tried several times to go through the list, and I can manage three pages before I am prepared to hang myself.

Someone needs to tell their web developer that the publications should be categorized by genre and theme, and that there should be a menu page you can scroll through to find the page that matches your interests. Simple. Yet they make it complicated. Yes, they have a topic selection feature, but the criteria, or how it is labeled, are confusing and not very explanatory. I think they assume a great deal about the writer who is looking for somewhere to park their boat. We are not all tech-savvy just because we can type on a computer.

In general, it is not easy to find anything in a clear, commonsense way. It is not easy to change some features. When I open the app, my page loads to this one story every single time. It is so incredibly annoying that I tried every which way to remove it and change it, but no. It is Kragled on to my start page. (That means Krazy Glued to all you non-LEGO movie fans.)

I know it is not the end of the world, but it would make mine easier if it were more common sense to use the site. It’s a small negative, I suppose.

There is one other little nuisance. The pay structure.

First, you can only get paid if you have a partner account. That is fine, since it costs no more than the original annual fee. But you only get paid if another member reads your posts. There is a clapping feature I still do not fully understand, but that is not the disappointing part. What is disappointing is that it is not accessible to readers outside the circle of trust. For outsiders to read your work, they too have to pay Medium's annual fees.

Yes, there is a “friend link” you can send or post when you share your article, but you have to use it manually. It doesn’t automatically point to that link when you share it. That being said, you make nothing if those readers read your stuff, so the point does not warrant much more time.

What needs to be addressed is the rate at which they pay the writer and how it is determined. There is no set amount you can see or be assured of. It is all very vague. There are no reports you can review to check their math.

You do get paid for the time a member spends reading your piece, but that does not kick in until the 30-second mark and beyond. Claps, highlights, and comments also contribute to income, but it is anyone’s guess how that amount is determined or what the income rate is. Everything varies based on engagement and where the traffic is coming from. Lately, that traffic needs to come from Google, the oracle of the internet on all things regarding life. Google SEO-generated traffic garners more pay per engagement, but who knows how much.

Yes, if you are asking yourself whether that traffic has to be a member, then welcome to my dilemma. I don’t know that either. However it is calculated, it amounts to peanuts, at least for now. I see pennies here and there, but nothing that is going to make me sell the farm and go all in on Medium. It is going to be a long road and an uphill climb.

I don’t get how these platforms think. They know most writers are on their climb toward their dreams. They charge you for that access. They make money off your membership, your work that brings subscribers to their platform, and the attention your stories get from other members or subscribers to your pages. The platform gives you pennies for the income they gain. It is hard to wrap my head around it, so here I am, walking the walk, beating the drum. Where will it all go? Who knows? I’ll let you know when I get there.

Keep writing, be smart with your money, and make wise choices.

(** I’ll go over my experience with sites like Duotrope, Chill Subs, Submission Grinder and Submittable next.)

(Published by No Time on Medium, June 2026)

#writer #writingcommunity #writing #writingtips #experience #process #lifelessons #new #writerscommunity #tips #review #reviews #critique #networking #newwriter

Click my Linktree to access it on your favorite site:

https://linktr.ee/alexandragrant8229_