Flash Call For Submissions

A 5-day window to send us your work in response to our writing prompts

As October approaches, signaling the last 3 months of the year, it’s a great time to look back and reflect on the goals and business strategies set at the beginning of the year.

I find I’ve often gone off course, and waiting until the end of the year can mean more time is wasted before I get back on track. But taking the time now to see what has or hasn’t worked gives me the opportunity to readjust my strategies and implement changes that will hopefully see me ending the year on a high.

At Start it up HQ, we’ve also been reflecting on what has arguably been the busiest and most notable year we’ve had in our seven-year history. Our rebrand in March saw us move away from big business, tech, and leadership-focused articles and move towards supporting individual creators as the Passion Economy boomed.

In May, we started a monthly Call for Submissions (just like the one you’re reading now) with the intent to attract new voices and give small writers a wider audience to share their work with.

As well as looking back, we’ve also been looking forward; adjusting our goals and strategies to better serve our audience and ensure that we continue to be Medium’s largest active publication.

So, with this in mind, we thought the perfect theme for this month’s submission call would be Looking Back and Looking Forward or Reflecting and Restrategising.

Looking Back (Reflecting)

Whether you’ve just joined the creator economy or have been a part of it even before it had a name, how do you assess whether you’re on the right track and are meeting your targets as a content creator/freelancer/entrepreneur?

Have you achieved everything you set out to achieve this year? Is the pandemic still having a (positive/negative) effect on your work?

Did you change your marketing strategy? Increase your productivity? Fire a client? Gain ten new clients? Did your health drop to the bottom of your list due to an influx of work? Did your profits increase due to a mindset shift that saw you tackle work differently?

What are the lessons you’ve learned in 2021? Were there more failures than expected? What have these taught you about success?

And what is success to you? Is it just based on numbers (earnings, clients, followers)? Or is it more about maintaining a certain lifestyle? Whether that means spending more time with family or traveling solo around the world.

What have been your little and big wins this year?

Maybe, like Dan Mowinski you used Liebig’s Law to completely transform your freelancing career.

Or like Jenn Leach you tried out being a virtual assistant for 30 days with surprising results.

Perhaps, you found that you epically failed as a remote worker like Brittany Kathleen but learned a lot in the process.

We want to hear how your year as a creative has gone; the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Looking Forward (Restrategising)

What are your goals for the rest of the year or even for the next 12 months?

How will your business strategy change? Do you plan to ramp up how much work you do after a lull in the summer? Maybe you’re prioritizing your health after a very busy year. Have you completely rethought your work and now want to do something else? Or do you have too much work and you’ll be starting a search for an employee or virtual assistant soon?

Maybe like Scott Stockdale you’ve created a plan to become a digital nomad within a year.

Or maybe like Austin Harvey you’ve decided to give up full-time freelancing to work in a bookstore.

We want to hear what your plans are; whether it’s a complete 360-degree turn or just a few tweaks to what is already a great business strategy.

Also in this category, we’d love to see what your future predictions are for the Creator Economy. We all know about The Great Resignation; how will this have an impact on creatives and freelancers? Are your future strategies taking into account current trends and changes in the way companies now do business? What is the new normal in the post-pandemic world and how can creators, freelancers, side hustlers, and entrepreneurs survive and thrive?

Read These Guidelines Before Submitting To Us

While we’re looking for personal stories, it’s very important that they are reader-focused. Ask yourself, why? Why should the reader spend 5–10 minutes reading your story? Will it add value to their lives? Will it entertain them? Could it change their way of thinking? It’s good practice to consider the “why” before you sit down to write anything.

Read some of the articles we’ve listed above to see how the writers’ have used their own experiences to help and advise others in a similar position.

Also note how these articles are very specific, tackling one topic or area. Focused advice is often more valuable than an article that covers several different ideas at a rudimentary level. So, choose your target audience, topic, and angle and stick strongly to that.

Submissions are also judged on the basis of our normal guidelines so please read those if you are not already familiar with them. Please also note:

Articles must be a minimum of 4 minutes. There is no maximum length but 5–7 minute reads tend to perform best.
We do not accept articles about Medium. So, if your article is about your journey on Medium or strategies for writing on the platform, it will not be accepted.
We are actively disincentivizing clickbait titles. “How I made $$$$$ doing XYZ” is the kind of title we will not accept. Even if your article provides advice on strategies that can help others make more money with their creative pursuits, this should not be reflected in the title or be the over-arching angle of the article itself.

Send Us Your Work Now!

Our call for submissions is open from now (Tuesday 21st September) and closes at midnight EST on Sunday 26th September.

If you’ve never written for us before then you can submit your article to us here. If you’re an existing contributor then submit to us in the normal way.

If none of the above ideas grab your attention, but we hope they do, then we’re still open for normal submissions so don’t forget to check out our guidelines here.

We receive a high amount of submissions and can’t unfortunately, publish everything we receive. We try to give feedback on any work we don’t accept but if you haven’t heard back from us within 36 hours of submitting then please assume we’ve passed and you are free to submit your work elsewhere.

If you have any questions, queries, or feedback then please leave us a comment and one of the team will get back to you.

We can’t wait to read your stories.

The Start it up team