I am Writing For my ‘Silent Readers’
People who write something online and who aim to earn some money from writing tend to focus on the eyeballs. The eyeball is critical when you want to make money from your website or content on any kind of platform and social media. At the same time, we should not forget that there are long-term and short-term strategies to boost up your business.
The eyeball more or less influences the income of your online business. Very roughly speaking, the more eyeballs your content has, the more income you can get. However, the number of page views is always relative and depends on all different types of factors.
People say “content is king,” but the reality is not that you can get more traffic as long as you provide better creations.
Tracing the eyeball could be like a roller coaster. If you can properly approach online business the traffic will go up no matter whether it is slowly or quickly.
Everyone likes standing on the peak and looking down to the town, don’t they? Your page view will hit the peak sooner or later and after the peak there is no other way, but sliding down.
You may have a trip with lots of ups and downs, dramatic or boring. If you are a mentally strong person you may be able to enjoy this drama, but I couldn’t.
I dreamt about having an exciting life as a revolutionary when I was a child, but that was not what I wanted. There are lots of elements which you cannot control.
The search engine is an easy example to understand. They change their algorithm from time to time. They may be on your side on one day, but they could stand by your competitors on the next day.
There is something out of your control and it is not a healthy life that you check your figures every day or every hour. The morning with lower numbers for the previous day than usual destroys your whole day. I cannot live on this kind of life; mania and depression.
I know some writers started writing as a therapy. When you are not mentally in good condition, writing is the right way to keep your mind calm. However, once you start clinging to making money and focus too much on the status of your content, you may find out that it is more difficult to take the balance; happiness and depression. It is a dangerous game.
That is one of the reasons why I am now trying creative writing more than ever. I want to have more fans; loyal readers, some people who really love my writing and can read repeatedly. Those loyal audiences will follow you regardless of other factors, even when you change your platform to publish your creations.
Recently, I have written that I was like a ‘platform traveller.’ I haven’t tried many platforms for English writing yet, but I have written on lots of different platforms in Japanese before I started writing in English.
I don’t care much about my blog writing. Even though some of my stories were lost for some reasons, I can write similar pieces as long as they are blog posts. Or they could be even better content after I re-write them.
On the other hand, my creative writing, such as poetry or short stories, are like my children. I always brought them with me as I travelled from one platform to another.
And then, I realised that a few of the readers — not many though — , followed me and my writing even when I moved the place to write and there are also ‘silent readers’. Some people like leaving a comment after they read online, but others don’t like to. So was I. I used to be the one who never commented on anything even when I loved the story.
You can feel like you are read by someone when you receive their feedback, but in fact, most of the people don’t leave any comments. They come back to your creation even though they don’t say anything. They will find you even though you changed your place online as long as you leave some footprints on your social media or whatever.
You cannot get many of your real audiences within a short period. You need to take time to grow it, and once you have loyal readers, you can be always who you are. You don’t have to sell your soul to the search engines.
Because nobody leaves a comment on your story doesn’t mean that you don’t have a loyal audience. It is just that you may need to open your ears.
My audience is not big, but I don’t get disappointed with that. The important thing is that I have somebody, not ‘none’, because the difference between ‘one’ and ‘zero’ is huge. That’s why I can continue writing, as long as you come back to read my murmurs, even though you are a quiet reader or even anonymous.
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