Writing about writing is like a maze within the Squidoo.
Once upon a time...
Way back in the winter of 2013, I started the journey of writing online; this seems like yesterday, yet that was 13 years ago nearly.
Interestingly, I started out as a citizen journalist on an up and coming revenue sharing platform called All Voices. That included me of course, yet there wasn’t much revenue sharing coming my way.
Maybe, I earned around .50 cents, never reaching the payment threshold. I soon realized after many afternoons of mowing lawns for my small lawn care business, that my hopes and dreams probably wouldn’t be realized through this particular platform.
I didn’t stop there though.
Proceeding on, in an online world without the Z Generation magnification that came later around 2020, I found Squidoo and HubPages. I proceeded to write heartfelt pieces that helped me realize my writing acumen was lacking something fierce (even worse than now). Still, I carried on.
The next stage of development I needed was the freedom to write what I wanted, without any pesky editors or censorship (real or imagined). This led me to a free WordPress blog (now called The Writer’s Lowdown) and eventually to Blogger, where I made my home.
Blogger was owned by Google and it simply worked for me at the time; I worked hard to get approved for Adsense and started writing a conspiratorial storm of articles that would make the Franklin Coverup blush.
My high point was to get made fun of in a Cracked article by some funny guy- hey thanks man- and this put me on the map somewhere in the middle of nowhere and no place at all. The article was about Eminem being a clone, which I still think is true by the way, some things never change. (Probably in the Way Back machine).
What did change is my writing strategy, about every 6 months, and eventually this led to the deletion of my main effort called The Lowdown Truth. I also deleted A Writer’s Review and another Blogger site called Christian Blogger’s Journal (this about a year ago).
Even with all this trigger happy deletion, I still have two websites (blogs, whatever they are called) on Blogger, Jesus Loves Ministry and Business and Society Articles.
If you only knew how much ever loving time I spent on those efforts, working on the oversized and ballooned writing system I built all the while trying to simplify my efforts. Well, simplifying isn’t one of my strengths I guess, cause the writing effort at one point was even called a network!
The Lowdown Network, maybe is should have been called the effort to remember what they heck I was doing, cause I couldn’t keep up with any of it. I mean, none of it ever made me any money to note, besides a couple of dear souls giving me some on Patreon and Substack.
I could go through the scant money I made, yet all in all, after 13 years of Blogger and WordPress, I probably have spent more money on domains than I’ve made from Adsense or affiliates or from a link to my book, etc. (Just to note, I’ve made zero from around 5 affiliates I was faithfully giving place for around a decade!). Was is the key word...
It gives me and you a headache just thinking about it, I’m guessing.
What I want to convey is the journey is long, and often it doesn’t work out like the fake compromisers may have you believe. If you don’t talk like a fake it until you make it, or follow a sure fired template for success, or just don’t give a rat’s ass about branding yourself, you might find simply dirty pennies at the end of the rainbow.
And the journey of hundreds and even thousand of articles spread across the online wasteland of writing platforms, both dead and alive, may just end with a philosophical insight worth more than the mansions the affiliate markers pretend is theirs while staging some ad for YouTube while building their hollow pyramid scheme.
Really though, what I’ve learned isn’t just cynicism, it is who I am as a writer, and who I’m not willing to be, nor can be even if I tried.
Every time I tried to do the successful things, I got a major headache and realized I would rather be poor my entire life than follow this trail of tears called branding myself.
Maybe this flies in the face of many of the fake wanna be writers and marketers here on LinkedIn, and maybe it strikes a cord of resonance within the far reaches of your neglected writing soul, either way, this is what happens when you love to write more than you love money.
Anyway.
With that intro, I would like to make a point.
Besides going through the history of the 13 year journey hardly anyone really cares about, nor has time to even consider, I would like to be concise in saying, I still find I need a place to write about writing. Is that so bad?
The contradiction is obvious, and I have no allusions about gaining traction with this circular effort (well, maybe a little still), and I still find the need to write about writing, as banal as that may be.
You would be proud, I have simplified my writing efforts these days, sort of. Yep, I have a Substack, which I syndicate with my Blogger and WordPress websites (or are the blogs, geez).
Well, I also have my Jesus Loves Ministry Blogger which I neglect and don’t know what to do with, and I have another Blogger website called Better Golfing Days, which I failed to mention before.
Essentially, I like to write about society, sociological concepts, including Christian topics and conspiratorial elements of history.
Oh, I have a Blogger with my music too, see it is so simple now.
With all of this simplicity, I find myself almost exclusively writing to my journal in Word, which only me and God can see. All this effort to create these places to reach the world with my writing, and I spend most of my time writing to myself and God.
I would like to think this type of nonsensical behavior is exactly what a writer does, at least, that is what this writer does, for better or worse.
This brings me to the conclusion of this particular piece. Essentially, I’ve decided I need a place to write about writing, and this is where that place is going to be.
See, I’ve selected writers and authors as the people I’ve connected to here. No, they (you) don’t ever react to my shares, and it hardly seems I have any connections, yet I do have nearly 6k writers I’ve connected with over the years, thinking it would help me gain traction with my shares, etc.
Another wonderful failure to add to my writing resume.
Let me end this with a few bright points. I did make around $20k as a copywriter before AI came in and ruined all the fun, and I have made around $3k from my personal writing -- from my eBooks (now some are in print) and from NewsBreak mostly, also some from HubPages (R.I.P.) and other pennies coming in over the years.
Hey, that makes me a professional writer! Can’t you tell?
So, maybe you will listen to me now and really believe I have the right stuff to lead you to the promise land of writing success.
Well, I would rather lead you to the promise land of the Kingdom of God and the faith of Jesus Christ, if you don’t mind, but in the process, maybe we can talk about writing some and have some good times, that is my hope.
Until next time, signing off for now.
Originally published on LinkedIn
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