Simily Meta

Am I Succeeding on Simily?

I got voted Story of the Month; is this what success looks like?

I’ve been writing on Simily since January, when I heard about this fiction-focused Medium alternative platform. Fiction on Medium often doesn’t do very well in my experience; here, nonfiction is king. On Simily, however, fiction and poetry are in high demand, so I slowly began migrating some of my stories from this platform over to what I hoped might be an up-and-coming website to rival Medium, Vocal, and other pay-per-view writing platforms.

After just two months of writing on Simily, yesterday I woke up to an exciting email from the Simily Team:

“Congratulations! Over 100 Simily members voted and your story “The Fitting Room” was chosen for Story of the Month! We will feature your story in our newsletter, on our website, and on our social media pages! Be sure to share the news with family and friends!”

My story, “The Fitting Room,” has been voted Story of the Month by Simily readers! Throughout February, readers could vote on their favourite story out of five nominees, and my little humour story got the most votes. Wow! This must mean I’ve really “made it” on Simily, right? I must be making money?

Well, maybe. Simily’s earning model goes a little something like this:

In theory, writers earn a flat rate of $0.02 per view of their story, from both external and internal sources (although whether this claim is true has been contested). This means no confusing ‘read time’ metric or getting frustrated when Google sends a bunch of external viewers to your story. However, the platform is still new and very small, so getting those views is far more difficult than on other platforms. Moreover, Simily won’t pay out until you reach a minimum threshold of $10 — a truly unattainable 500-views worth of income.

My Story of the Month story, “The Fitting Room,” got only 73 views during the voting period (February). That means at the very most, 73 people saw the story, and not even necessarily read it. In one month, it earned only $1.46 after being promoted on Simily’s main page as one of five finalists for Story of the Month. The same story earned $2.07 on this platform, where it went largely unnoticed compared to my nonfiction stories, getting only 39 total views (27 internal). That amounts to $0.076 per internal view, and I was actually paid out for that story’s earnings.

I haven’t yet reached the $10 minimum payout threshold on Simily, in two months on the platform. I post consistently 1–2 times per week and have 16 stories online now, a mix of new and older fiction and poetry. My most-viewed post is a poem, “If emails were honest,” which has gotten 249 views ($4.98). This poem was the Story of the Week on Simily’s homepage for a week in January, prior to the platform moving to a Story of the Month and voting system.

Despite these two posts performing well, most of my stories on Simily have fewer than 15 views. I have 82 followers on the platform, meaning that most of my followers have not read more than one, maybe two, of my posts… if any. On Simily, it seems people follow blindly without reading, perhaps in a follow-for-follow scheme similar to what plagues this platform now that there is a 100-follower requirement to join the MPP.

With the small number of readers on Simily, I’m not sure it could possibly be worth it to make it a focal platform. I say this as a writer who has been featured not once, but twice, by the Simily Team: the viewers aren’t there. As much as a flat rate $0.02/view payout seems like a great deal, if you can’t get more than a dozen or so views on any given post even with significant time investment (and I do post my stories on groups, in chats, etc.), how can this platform possibly be sustainable? The truth is, it won’t. Most people will never earn the $10 payout, and their invested time and stories will get them bupkis.

I am nearing that threshold now, with two prominently featured stories under my belt. I’ll be sticking it out for the time being and hoping that there is a way forward for this platform, because I really do think we need a fiction-focused publishing platform that pays writers for views.

Simily right now feels a bit like screaming into a void, and very, very rarely hearing a voice call back. But I’m one of the lucky ones, because I’ve heard a few voices in the dark. Many of us, I think, have yet to get anything back at all.

If this is what success looks like on Simily, I’m not sure I’ll be sticking around for much longer.

Articles about joining Simily were all the rage here in January and early February. By mid-month, I started seeing people dropping out — having not earned to the threshold despite considerable effort, many people seem to be falling off the Simily bandwagon already.

It’s a new, small platform and we need to give it time to grow. However, if the investment we’re making isn’t seeing returns, there is only so much leeway writers can give Simily while it stretches its legs.

Maybe my Story of the Month will blow up and I’ll be singing the praises of Simily in a few weeks. Maybe nothing will change, and I’ll quietly tick over the $10 finish line only to drop this new platform to focus on more reliable sources of income. I don’t know yet, but what I do know, is that even for the people ‘at the top,’ this platform isn’t offering much — yet.

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To see more of my work, follow me on Medium or check out my personal nonfiction, nonfiction journalism and longform fiction. I do not monetize poetry or flash fiction. My novels are temporarily out of print; find out why in my article, “The Dreamspinner Press Controversy.” You can find me on Twitter or like my public Facebook page.

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