Hello fellow blog writers and content creators! It has been over a year since I quit my day job and have dedicated my mornings to content creation. There have been a lot of ups and downs to the past year but, more than anything I am grateful for the ability to work from home and spend my afternoons to my homesteading chores.
The Journey
My path as a content creator started years ago. For so much of that time I wrote articles and Instagram posts that yielded very little attention. I tried to promote my physical art and ended up spending much more than I made. Mostly, this was due to my own lack of confidence and not searching out the platforms where the type of content I share could thrive.
Of course finding HIVE has been key to finding an audience where the time I spent on photography and writing could be seen and appreciated. Later on in this post I will share another platform where my blogging has actually made me money.
First though I want to discuss one tool that is essential to my writing...
Keeping a Notebook
The muse comes to me at random moments and if I don't write down my idea immediately it is likely to disappear just as quickly. That is why I now have a notebook that is dedicated to writing exclusively. There I jot down ideas for future video scripts and outline articles.
That brings me to probably my most important rule for content creation is ... planning! I love to fly by the seat of my pants and work when inspiration strikes but, some days I wake up without much of any. That is why keeping a notebook of all the ideas I had when I was feeling inspired is so key.
Keeping a Schedule
I usually work on content creation a few hours in the morning before making lunch and then a few hours at night after dinner. Looking at screens all day is not at all conducive to my creative process so my evening work sessions usually involve pen and paper only. The time I spend writing out ideas is well worth it as the articles come out very smoothly the following morning when I sit down to type them on the computer.
My partner and I have a lot of different projects going on. We take care of a 10 acre farm that involves lots of landscaping and house work. In the afternoons we usually both travel a mile up-hill to do some work on the house we are building. With so many different tasks to do each day it works best for me to have an order in which I do them each day: make breakfast, write, take pictures, tidy up, make lunch, rest, landscape etc. You get the idea... I have found that giving myself structure also gives my creativity the time & space to show up.
Medium vs. Hive
The bulk of my content creation happens on two blogging platforms though I have recently started making videos too. We are all familiar with HIVE, of course, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss the difference between Medium and Hive. Medium.com is a lot like Hive in that it promotes written content and the perspectives of regular people rather than journalists. But, It is really different from Hive in two main reasons:
On Medium posts (which there are called stories) must be approved by editors if they are to get any kind of circulation on the site. You can simply publish anything you want to your personal blog but, unless you have a huge following it is unlikely to get much attention. The way to get views, likes, and followers is by submitting your stories to the different publications on the website.
There is no limit to how long a "story" can earn. I have posts that I wrote a year ago that have earned upwards of $100 and are still earning! Of course I have many posts that were never accepted in any publication or I had so much back and forth between and editor that the time I spent on the story far outweighed any earnings.
Medium has recently opened up the countries accepted for earnings through their Partner Program so, it might be worth looking into sharing your work their too! I will say, however, that Medium is not quite as fun as HIVE. Most people are there purely to earn and their is a more serious vibe to the website. On the other hand the more journalistic approach to the website pushes me to improve my writing, so it isn't all bad.
Sharing my Writing Online & Off
I am a child of the 90's and thus, cannot neglect to mention the very analog aspect of my writing. Any post that I share online starts out as an entry in the work notebook that I mentioned previously. And now, many of my online articles actually circle back and become full zines which I share via my Etsy Shop.
Etsy is a very well known platform that has global reach. Though I only ship within the United States at the moment, I still think it is the best website to market and find zines and other forms of physical art. Zine making, however, is not a big money maker. This aspect of my content creation I do for love of keeping DIY publishing alive. As someone who spends a few hours online every single day it seems important to also dedicate time to drawing, designing, and copying-and-pasting too.
so, would you recommend medium? i have not looked around but stumbled on a few articles on there in the past years
always windered why larimer uses medium more than hive ;)
blessings
I would recommend Medium for anyone who is interested in blogging and would like a wider reach that HIVE. Though HIVE is much more fun (to me personally) there is a lot to like about Medium too.
You can check if your country is included on the list of eligible countries here:
https://medium.com/creating-on-demand/medium-partner-program-is-now-supported-by-worldwide-403fca048e4e
yeah, more permanence of relevance is what i am after. hive is still not really searchable and i would like the articles to be more easily reachable in the future as well.
thanks
from what you say I think Medium would be perfect for your work! Let me know when you set up a page and I will follow you there.
I always thought this was a great way to make your blog more accessible.
hey shani, thanks a ton for sharing!
oh @barge, i miss you
am i getting this right that this is basically a "simple" pinned post with the leading hashtag "index"? or is there a feature on peakd i am not aware of?
would be a workaround at least though this does not seem to make my content more reachable through search engines, for non-hivers.
does this, in your competent opinion, qualify as an idea to start a token project on hive, what do you think? something that ensures searchability and rankability on the interwebs linking directly to peakd.
i am not aware of any good searching methods that deliver. hivesearcher does not let me filter by account name, peakd search arbitrarily hides posts and hivewhat.com is no longer a thing it seems.
blessings man!
It was created before peakd existed so I guess yes, it is a simple linked post with #index as the leading tag. I believe in peakd there is the facility to pin one post in the "blog" section, which could be another place to put an index, but this simple link seems a good solution, too. 🙂
I'm not sure what you mean?
I'm a woman 🙂
i'm not sure it's worth it either. seems like i am the only one wanting hive articles to be properly indexed by search engines, not just accessible from within peakd and such.
i was reminded of your call to innovate token projects on hive from a few months back and keep thinking on ideas since then. other than a specific festival coin used for paying food and chai, i hadn't had much success in coming up with any use case. searching would be one but never mind.
noted, cheers
I was following the whole explanation on medium. I got interested until the whole competitive thing. I would have loved to write there if most people weren’t going there to just earn.
But woah, you put it in a lot of work into your diy posts than I can even imagine. With all that you have to do, you still manage to pull it off nicely. That’s really admirable Chloe,❤️
Maybe competitive wasn't exactly the word I was searching for. Maybe I should say that Medium is a bit more serious. The fact that on Hive anyone can post in any community is really inviting and is the reason why I post here pretty much daily. I think Medium is still a vey interesting platform and I noticed that Ghana was on the list of countries eligible for the partnership program (https://medium.com/creating-on-demand/medium-partner-program-is-now-supported-by-worldwide-403fca048e4e) so maybe it is worth checking out!
Alright, I’ll check it out
Thank you
Sending Love and Ecency Curation Vote!
Follow Eceny's curation trail to earn better APR on your own HP. : )
Many thanks ☀️
I like your daily schedule bookmarks(?) It is really a good idea to keep daily schedule reminded 😊 I must make one for me too as a freelancer. Thank you for the inspiration!
It is a bookmark! It ia a gentle way to remind myself to stay with the program 💚