Typos, Nasty Comments and Money

The Life of a Writer Finding Himself

The darkness of the pandemic caused me to light a spark within. I needed to write again. I remember pacing for a long time with a blank page on my screen, wondering what to write. There were so many things to say.

So, I wrote a long piece about how my journalism career was cut short by the internet revolution. I detailed how I transformed from reporter to revolutionary, starting my own online venture.

I worked very hard writing the piece, yet I’m not sure even one person read it.

Hmm… Now what?

Ironically, my training as reporter wasn’t going to help me, aside from knowing how to craft sentences. So I reverted the article back to a draft.

I needed to meditate on everything… I started reading … a lot.

First, I Looked To Other Bloggers For Guidance

I studied successful bloggers. Some said to write about what you love because you’ll want to keep doing it, others said write to make money because that’ll sustain you.

I figured there has to be some middle ground here, to enjoy the process of self-expression yet make the words useful, valuable to people, even enlightening.

I started noticing what I liked to read, and then it hit me. I had to take what I learned from living life itself, from overcoming challenges, and put that into writing.

So, I took a whole new approach in my next story, and wrote about a little epiphany during a cloudburst in a park. Here’s my first story that survived:

https://medium.com/@joe.moody/how-your-imagination-can-help-you-live-longer-be49dfb53693

Not only did the article receive over 50 views, but also 4 comments from amazing people! Comments like, “Thank you for being you.”

Oh, I was hooked. I found my tribe. I found my medium (pun intended).

I kept writing, worrying less about stats and more about connecting with readers, and I loved sharing in their writing as well.

Eight months later, I was honored to become a top writer in two of the tags from that first article, “Productivity,” and “Self Improvement.”

It was August 2021, and my articles started going viral. Everything changed, again.

What Happens When An Article Gets 10,000+ Views

I continued writing and finding innovative ways to produce, and suddenly I started writing articles that were getting thousands of views.

Until then, I received almost all positive comments on everything I wrote: encouragement from other writers, thanks from people who received a tip at the perfect time… It was heaven.

But I wasn’t really making much money.

I didn’t really care though, because writing meant everything to me.

Then, when some of my stories started getting more traffic, I started getting comments of a different sort…

One article I wrote asked why there were more single women today than in previous generations. At first, the story just received the regular positive comments, like thanks from women for a tip about making “the first move.”

Then, when the article went viral after some days, I started getting bitter responses from people saying that all men are essentially evil and “obsolete,” so the single women are better off that way.

Others were annoyed that the study cited college kids and didn’t include people from trade schools. These were criticisms I never could’ve fathomed.

I didn’t know what to do… I said to a woman who claimed men were obsolete that dating sites are seeing record revenues. As for the criticism about stats, I commented that it’s simply easier to track college kids.

It didn’t matter, other people were offended that I didn’t properly define what a “good” woman was (sigh).

I also wrote a satirical piece about the “real reason” bosses want their employees back in the office. That also started with positive feedback from people appreciating the comic relief.

But once it went viral, I started hearing from angry bosses who said that if I believed any of these business philosophies, I must be a horrible boss.

Then, The Typos Arrived

During this time of productivity and increased reader engagement, I continued trying to write new articles while keeping up with everything.

Unfortunately, sometimes that meant more typos in my articles. While I still went back and proofread as best as I could, all the excitement and output meant my near-perfect grammar started showing cracks.

Since then I’ve slowed down a bit, and gotten some help from a friend to help spot errors…

You Can Either Try to Please Everyone, Or Make Money

People don’t just click on articles to feel better about themselves or to learn something, sometimes they click on articles because they might disagree with the headline, or they might have an argument related to the topic.

Out of all the articles I’ve written over the last year, the two that generated the most controversy made the most money.

Now, do you want to go writing to provoke people? Of course not, people can sense that as trolling, so it doesn’t work anyway.

However, if you have a strong opinion on something, you should have no fear in expressing it, mainly because anyone who happens to disagree in a comment is actually helping you make more money!

People who find fault with what you say only add to your bottom line. Period.

So go ahead, leave nasty comments, or leave great comments, either way you help support the writing.

And if you find a typo, please let the writer know, but realize the typo might not be there because the writer was careless, maybe they were just on a roll.

https://medium.com/@joe.moody/how-your-imagination-can-help-you-live-longer-be49dfb53693