Do We Do It For The Meaning Or Do We Do It For The Monetization?
August 24 was the last day for Medium’s Writers Challenge for personal essays using writing prompts. I managed to complete three personal essays out of four writing prompts.
A lot of creators on Medium relate everything to making money but since I relish the hidden benefits of being a total loser in the money-making department of Medium, I pursue another focus, which I tried to articulate in these three related stories.
About the time that the challenge was announced, I had lost interest in Medium because my home stream was so filled with articles about making money and going viral that I was starting to think that I was better off without it as the stories I saw streaming were the very opposite of inspirational.
So, when the challenge was announced and the comments were about the usual subject of whether it was worth it or not from the money-making perspective of creators, I posted this:
This is the smartest move yet for a platform to try to get writers to write about something besides making money and going viral on the platform. I hope the project itself has the effect of centering the subject matter of content on this platform toward why we write in the first place- before it is about money. If it does that everybody wins.
As a result of that comment, I have been receiving claps and follows all month long and the comment gained100 fans. I do not know what a fan is, technically, but I understand that fans are considered more relevant than followers. Just now I went to check the comments on the Challenge announcement and discovered that my comment is number one in the “most relevant” list out of 291 comments I have the most claps (441).
The reason for the comment is that I always look at the platform changes from the perspective of what the platform is trying to gain. This is an effect of my entrepreneurial background operating in the ancient free enterprise system. In that system, the relationship between owner and employee is based on a mutually beneficial exchange. If you want to be of value to the other, in such an exchange, one needs to consider things from the point of view of the other. What does the other want and need? In this world where it often seems that money is all, most responses from content creators to platform changes are about whether or not there is a monetary gain in it for content creators, and this becomes speculations that platforms might be developing schemes to get free content from content creators, and thus everything devolves further and further into being only about money as reflected in the content I saw streaming on my home page.
However, I am not so cynical. I recognize that even if money is the bottom line, the way to be a successful content venue, the platform needs to deliver content that readers want to read. Writing about money is as worthy a topic as any other, it just becomes dreary when stories about “success” dominate everything else. If one followed the program advocated in these helpful stories, being a content creator seems barely different than a 9-5 pencil-pushing job.
For instance, should I write another story with Lepage or some other high profile name in the title instead of publishing the story where I look into the meaning behind the newly popular phrase “affordable workforce housing”? The latter story received a very small number of reads and did not gain any followers. I wrote both stories because I felt they are relevant, but clearly, the title of one was more clickable than the other, and for reasons that are a mystery, the latter received far fewer impressions as well. According to the many stories written about how to be “a success”- meaning going viral and making a lot of money, one should always be calculating the clickbait status of a title. Furthermore, one should choose the subject matter by targeting mass-market appeal. There are even lists of words to incorporate to make one’s title more clickable. I fail in that department by paying no attention to all of those tips.
That is why I choose to be a loser. The benefits of loserdom include being able to cover topics that I think are relevant. So far I have only 22 followers on Newsbreak and at this rate, It will take me at least a year to get to 200 followers needed to apply for monetization. None the less I was invited to apply for NewsBreak Creator of the Month, and that was when I had only 19 followers. Other Creators of the Month have at least 1000 followers. How unexpected would it be for Newsbreak to feature someone with only 22 followers who isn’t even monetized, no less!? When I answered the question ”What advice would you give to other writers to be a success?” I actually had to answer that question as if it applied to the writing process! What kind of a message would that send to the creator community?
Being Creator of the Month would potentially give a big boost to my follower’s numbers, maybe even pushing me over the top so I can apply for monetization. Then I would be able to find out more about what is really going on with so many one-to-one stats (impressions to views). According to what I am reading even if I were monetized I would barely make anything because of the smaller sized population for which my stories are written. It makes no particular sense for a platform that is about local news, to calculate monetization on “per 1000 views”, considering communities come in all sizes. However Newsbreak reportedly also has an NDA agreement which means it can make any individual terms it wants to make with a creator.
All of my thinking about writing for meaning or monetization is incorporated into the three stories I submitted to the Medium Writer’s Challenge. In engaging in such a contest, even though the winning prizes are large monetary rewards, it is a bit like winning a lottery, and so one looks at it in the sense of other gains to be had by engaging in the challenge. I realized at least it would mean my work would be read by the judges, although one can never be entirely certain of that, it’s still a good bet. As it turns out submitting stories to the challenge means my work is receiving more reads in general and also gaining followers and fans.
A new irony today - I just received a note on one of the three stories I submitted to the challenge, Work-Life or LifeWork with an invitation to publish in a new Medium publication called Financial Independence / Retire Early-A publication dedicated to the pursuit of Financial Independence, the stories, tips, hacks, highs and lows, and what comes after you reach your FI number…..
Perhaps I am just ahead of my time? Or maybe I am voicing what matters now to the generations that are up and coming. I submitted Work-Life or LifeWork to Financial Independence / Retire Early.
This seems like an apropos moment to promote Medium’s new benefit for creators. If you want to join Medium after my stellar description of its current state of affairs, Medium also has a new affiliate link, which will benefit yours truly, or anyone who is a member, such as anyone joining via my affiliate link and chooses to promote the affiliation. Truthfully, at this point, it looks like my popular comment about the Writer’s Challenge may be prophetic. Where it goes from here remains to be seen. One can still find very good writing on Medium and there is a list feature that is excellent for organizing stories one wants to read and reference- and it’s only five dollars a month.
In local news, Watershed has received another three million dollar endowment. Watershed had received the same when we stopped by to see them a few years ago when we were occupying the space that Watershed eventually took over. We were given the tour by the manager, in which it was explained to us with no uncertainty that Watershed does not teach ceramics, it just provides the real estate, dining, and ceramic-making facilities. The article announcing the award says “The Windgate Charitable Foundation has awarded Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts with a $3 million endowment to support the organization’s programs and operations. Watershed serves artists working in clay via residencies, workshops, kiln firing facilities, and exhibition opportunities. The new endowment will provide a sustainable stream of income for years to come while enabling the nonprofit to expand and diversify its programs.” Since the manager was very clear about the fact that Watershed plays no role in teaching ceramics, it must be people renting the real estate and facilities who conduct the workshops. After we were given the tour, we tried to introduce ourselves as well, but the manager’s face was “You know, I’m really not interested” and so we did not talk about Andersen Design with Watershed.
We were given the impression by the Watershed manager that Watershed is a specialized bread and breakfast. What the Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen would be aiming to do differently from Watershed would be to support the working artist-designers, in any discipline. in their own studio operations. As studio operators, we know the limitations well that come with having to fire in someone else’s kiln and work in someone else’s studio. The loading and all aspects of firing a kiln are part of the ceramic process. It matters how rapidly the kiln temperature rises and at what point of the firing it rises and how slowly it cools. If you are firing your piece in a kiln controlled by someone else, you have no control over that fundamental aspect of the creative process. If you make your own casting slip and glazes and decorating techniques from your own recipes, working in a communal space is even more problematic.
Andersen Design has been intentionally disadvantaged by the local and national communities for being a free enterprise operation, and for making our income from the creative process and original innovation in ceramics. Years ago Watershed invited us to a networking meeting in which there was a discussion about how much they could charge for the ”mudpies” they were selling as a fundraising event. There was a young woman, who looked no older than twenty. She had received a grant of five hundred dollars to give workshops in mud pie-making. She proposed a marketing concept. Instead of charging for the mud pie, she would charge for the event and give the mud pies away as part of the event.
Listening to all of this, I could no longer hold my tongue and spoke about how, if one were in business one would calculate the price by cost and that one would also be in competition with imported goods made in countries with low labor costs and practically no environmental regulations. I saw interest in the eyes of the young people, but when I finished, one of the women associated with Watershed, told me that they are not interested in what I had to say, they are interested in what the young woman has to say. My years of experience meant nothing. The effect was to silence my voice when I spoke about operating a ceramic production as a free enterprise, an attitude later echoed by Fractured Atlas when the board members deemed that “production means one is only in it for the money”.
However, for those who don’t have to deal with that aspect of Watershed, Watershed is a resource that shares many of our values, if not all of them. Our values and purpose serve individualism, decentralization, and ceramic design and research in a way that Watershed does not. In order to do real ceramic research and development, a dedicated space is required. If WaterShed can reel in money by the millions, why not an Andersen Design Museum of American Designer Craftsmen?
Where is my support system? It only takes three people! How do I find support when even the taxpayer-funded economic development council, helping themselves generously to my taxpayer dollars, tells me to go away- because they declare, they are not there to serve “private businesses”, as if they get that such a museum would also benefit Andersen Design, the private business, and others in our category.
As a specific political agenda, the JECD group did not want to see our business, or others like it, “retained” in the region. Instead, they want large-scale workforce housing for future large-scale employers. The large-scale workforces are rhetorical. The voices of individual people are real. You can’t really hear the individual voices through the workforce.
Some day in the future, when the seas rise, what chances will a small peninsula weighed down by its large-scale workforce housing developments, fifty-million dollar schools and large-scale corporate employers have against the sea? Whether thinking long or short term, a community developed around small-scale businesses is much more appropriate and sustainable for a fragile peninsula.
When I wrote these three personal essays for the Medium contest the long historical relationship of Andersen Design to the community comes through. After writing the first two stories, I felt thrown off of my current energetic focus. I realized that the two stories together tell a story of a relationship with community leaders over the decades and that it has not been a supportive one. - but it is not a finished story. What will the next chapter bring?
Writing Prompt: Space
A Hand Made World, The Path Less Traveled, Lost in History, Preserved in Memory
Writing Prompt: Reentry
A Time For SubCultures to Become the New Main Stream
Writing Prompt: Work