Writer Review: 5 Writing Platforms that Pay Beginners (2023)
This is a video by a writer I don't know that showed up in my YouTube feed.
I watched it because as someone who works on SN, I want to know what people think about other writing platforms and how they work since I see SN as competing with them to some degree.
She has two categories for writing platforms: payment per view vs payment per job.
The first three pay per view and the last two are job boards.
1. Medium
- Medium = Twitter (social media platform) + Wordpress (blogging platform) + getting paid to write
- everytime a paid member reads one of your posts, you earn a small portion of their membership fee
- membership fee for readers: $5 per month
- this means you get paid 2ct per view / $20 per thousand views
- no membership: two stories free per month
- to get paid as a writer, you need
at least 100 followersto be a member for $5 per month (updated since video was released) - no ads
- you can write about whatever you want
- what other people want to read matters more than what you want to write if you want to earn money
- health, wealth and love are the evergreen topics that tend to perform best
- medium partners with stripe, but stripe only partners with 40 countries
- even if you can't / don't get paid, you can use Medium as a portfolio website
- $10 minimum payout
2. Simily
- specifically for creative writing ("home for getting paid for creative writing")
- 2ct per view / $20 per thousand views
- very similar to Medium
- no idea how stories get promoted: algorithm? chronological?
- $10 minimum payout
- temporary business model
- later: switch to revenue sharing model similar to Medium where you get paid according to how many paying readers view your stories
3. Vocal
- mix between Medium and Simily
- if you're a Vocal+ member for $10 per month
- 0.6ct per view / $6 per thousand views
- 2.9% transaction fees on tips
- $20 minimum payout
- exclusive challenges
- early access to new features
- if you're not:
- 0.38ct per view / $3.80 per thousand views
- 7% transaction fees on tips
- $35 minimum payout
- unique feature: writing challenges with a prompt, guidelines and high prices like $20k (!)
- you have to submit stories which Vocal checks before they go live (10-24h delay between submit and going live)
- rubric can be confusing
- paying money to make money is a strange concept
4. Scripted
- you have to apply to join pool of writers
- once you're in, you have access to a selection of jobs that clients upload
- you need to pass a test that has only 5% acceptance rate but it seems simple (mostly grammar questions)
- previous portfolio recommended (like on Medium) to get assigned to jobs
- clients can't pay less than 7ct per word
- access to different topics
- there are good clients (have been on Scripted for 3+ years)
- upfront work required
- three ways to make money:
- Smart Match
- client uploads brief
- Scripted matches that to writers based on their profiles (probably AI)
- the first who accepts gets the job
- you need to be fast (she once waited was two minutes late and the offer was already gone)
- client sets rate
- Proposals
- client uploads brief
- Scripted matches that to writers
- first 5 quality proposals will be reviewed by client
- you need to be fast but client has two weeks to review proposals
- you can set your own rate along with proposal
- Job Board
- clients upload jobs
- you can propose
5. Text Broker
- you have to apply to join job board
- you get a star rating between 1 to 5 stars
- clients can upload job briefs and specify how high your rating must be to apply
- you simply accept jobs (no application)
- a couple 100 words at most ("short, snappy jobs")
- you can also apply to join a team so you get regular assignments from clients
- if you're a really good writer, you can receive direct orders from clients
- low pay like 2ct per word ("insultingly low")
- no upfront work for jobs required
- confusing application, bad website UX
- best out of 5 to get paid right away
- $10 minimum payout
Conclusion
What's seems to be unique to SN is that you can earn sats without any membership fee. However, we take 10% from zaps for sybil resistance since they are also used as a signal to rank content.
Also, you don't get paid by view but only per zap. So based on view count, you probably don't earn much on SN compared to these other platforms. But you get paid in bitcoin and there is no minimum payout.
What do you think? Are there any features these writing platforms have that SN would benefit from? How well does SN compete with these platforms, in your view?