In 2019, I tried to move on from Elephant Journal and began to write for Medium.
It was thoroughly unsatisfying. The problem was that the format was just like Elephant and the only real difference was that one did not have immediate access to a large audience. I still see so many people write these pieces that get very little attention. I certainly wasn’t going to continue with that for very long.
Last year, I found out about a platform called Substack after one of my favorite writers, Matt Taibbi, began to write there. It seemed like the perfect idea. Some of the articles are free, so subscribers don’t have to pay for anything. Some of the content, however, is going to be only available to those who sign up for a paid subscription of $5 a month. That didn’t seem like too much to ask. Or at least that’s what I initially thought. My aunt was very clear about the fact that she was not going to pay $5 per month to read my work.
No matter, though. I do have about 5 people so far who have agreed to help me get started. That was all I needed as far as encouragement.
I made this decision on Sunday morning and, here, on Tuesday, I have already woken up with second thoughts. All of those familiar fears pop up to the surface: am I overestimating my own abilities? Am I less popular than I thought? Maybe I should just quietly return to Elephant Journal and deal with the things I dislike as I have always done.
The only problem with that is the fact that there is really no guarantee how long Elephant Journal is going to be around for. I have watched the readership dwindle down considerably over the last two years. Many of the writers privately message each other the question, “What are we going to do if Elephant Journal shuts its virtual doors?”
So, not only is my plan a way for me to become more free as a writer, it also protects me from the eventuality of my platform going belly up. Of course it is going to be difficult to get my first 50 paid subscribers–but haven’t people been taking risks in business since the dawn of time? I have been writing for Elephant for five years at this point. Haven’t I earned the right to, at least, try to become independent? If I never stopped playing at “open mics.” I would not be a paid performer right now. Eventually we, as creators, need to ask more from ourselves.
Besides, I wrote an entire book about this very thing. Sure, Elephant Journal is comfortable. There’s always a good chance that I will get my name out in front of tens of thousands of readers over the course of a year. My by-line even says that I have accrued 8400 followers. But that all comes with a price.
The compensation for Elephant is done like a contest. Every week there are ten articles that are standouts among the hundred that have been published. The first place gets $200, second gets $150, a few get $108 and $75 and the bottom gets $50. Last week I watched my article go from 2nd place to 10th place. It’s enough to give a person agita.
And acid reflux aside, it also has a tendency to dictate what I will and will not write about. What good is writing about something you find extremely important, if no one is going to read it? So by having my own audience, I have the freedom to not have to worry about how catchy the title is or if the picture is eye pleasing enough to entice someone to read me.
Don’t get me wrong: EJ has done a lot for me over the last five years. I have vowed to myself to never become one of those people who bad mouth the platform over social media because things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to. Frankly, I have witnessed it too many times over the years and it feels very low class to me. The internet in its entirety seems to have completely changed the advice many of us were given so freely as we grew up. The ol’ “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” somehow became “if you have nothing nice to say, find a snarky way to phrase it and tweet it and hope it goes viral.”
I want to focus primarily on the positive. If I try hard enough, can I do what almost seems impossible? I have done it before. If I put the same amount of work in, can I do it again?
I’d like to think so.
The author chooses
I follow someone on Sub stack