Another Reason Why I should Always Submit to Publications

A case study of all my self-published articles

Self-publishing is good. No, it is not good. I have seen a reason why I should not self-publish or encourage newbies on Medium to self-publish.

From May 2020 to date, I wrote about 110 articles that earned between $2.54 and $0.00. Out of these articles, I got the most views and read from my self-published articles. But wait! That is not all.

I have studied the earnings on my self-published articles versus the earnings on the ones submitted to publications. I discovered for the reason I can’t give an explanation that my self-published stories attract more external views than internal views. I can’t explain the factors responsible for the internal and external views of stories shared on Medium.

I started self-publishing when I joined Medium. The reason was that getting a publication that will add you immediately as a newbie is a bit difficult unless your first writings were a good piece. I wasn’t lucky. Again, I was in a haste to be heard. Like other writers, I didn’t pay closer attention to some of the publishing guidelines.

I have written previously on submitting articles on publications and I once said that submitting articles to publications does not influence how they are read. Having Articles Published in Pubs Does not Influence How They are Read.

Sometimes, submitting stories to publication does not influence how they are read. The number of reads and views a writer has on a particular story may not be influenced by submission to publication. This is to say that, a self-published article may be read better than the one submitted in a publication.

I was inspired to write on the topic when I discovered that articles with the highest reads on my feeds were not published in any publication. They were self-published. This finding lured me into publishing most of my articles by myself.

But recently, I made another shocking finding which has killed my desire to self-publish. I discovered that although my self-published articles gathered massive views compared to publications published, their earnings are discouraging.

My Self-published Articles versus Publication submissions

Like I have said, I started publishing stories by my self when I joined newly. I have self-published a total of about 30 stories on Medium and submitted about 80 to different publications.

I have looked into the earnings of these of all these articles and found out that no matter how little the number of views of articles published on Publications is, the writer must earn from it. This is not the case in self-published articles.

I shall be proving this by using four articles; two from publications and the other two from self-published. These articles are in the categories of “The highest views and the lowest views”.

Articles with the Highest Views and Reads

The article with the highest views among my stories falls under the category of my self-published stories. With Fermented Cabbage Juice; It is Goodbye to Ulcers

The article was published on May 21, 2020, and earned $0.03. It was skipped by the curator for no reason but with a promise of coming back for another review. The article has 185 views (174 external views 94% and 11 internal views 6%).

I made a comparison using my best read article that was published in a publication. My first Month $0.10 as a Writer is My Motivator. The article was published on July 15, 2020, and earned $2.45. Just like the self-published, it skipped curation. This article has 131 views,116 internal views, and 15 external views.

Articles with the Lowest Views

I made another comparison using articles with the lowest views in the two categories. In the self-published category, my article on Before You Eat African Salad; Know This First has the lowest views. It was published on May 20, 2020, and earned $0.00. This article has a total of 37 views, 37 external and 0 internal.

The Idea of Humming a Birthday Song While Washing Hands is Genius. This article was published in a publication on June 8, 2020. It has 6 views and 1 read, internal views 3, internal views 3. It earned $0.02. This article earned something with as little as a single read.

I chose to pick two articles from self-published and publication submissions; articles with the highest views and the lowest views from both angles.

I took the time to study the behavior of all my articles published in publications and the ones I self-published in terms of their views and earnings. From my findings, the articles I submitted to publications generated more earnings than my self-published stories.

Articles published in publications have an 80% advantage of generating internal views and reads and from what I have observed, internal views are members reading stats and that is what generates earnings.

I started tracking how my stories are read and how they perform financially when published on publications and self. I want to state at this junction that almost all reads and views on publications mean some cents.

This is not so with self-published articles. This is another reason why I may not self-publish again, at least for now.

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