Learn 1 critical lesson from my online writing nightmare
Last night, I experienced perhaps my greatest nightmare as an online writer.
I signed on here as usual to check for responses to my stories and was greeted instead by a truly grotesque sight.
A big red bar at the top of my screen informing me that my account was in violation of the site’s rules.
I was confused … and quite terrified!
Surely this had to be a mistake — I’m very diligent about following platform rules and I don’t write anything particularly controversial.
Maybe it was a glitch?
It seemed as though I could still do everything I normally could — post comments, clap, etc., but I was still suspicious.
So I signed onto another profile to check and realized this very account you’re reading right now had been wiped off the face of the earth.
It was just … gone.
My profile, my articles … everything.
As I started copying over my hundreds of thousands of words of content from the backend into a Google Doc, I emailed support.
I’m a fairly high-profile writer with 350 stories to my name, I explained.
If I’d run afoul of the rules, it was completely unintentional and I would be happy to remedy the situation immediately.
I was in a panic.
Sweet relief
The response came quickly.
I would just like to say here that the support folks on this site are unmatched.
People are super friendly and very speedy to get back to you — which is pretty much unheard of from a tech company.
Support explained that it appeared one of my stories had been inadvertently caught up in a spam filter.
Everything had been restored, my friend assured me.
I checked again. I was there.
Hallelujah!
Although I was overjoyed in the moment, as the night went on, the incident really got me thinking again about the dangers of building on just one platform.
It’s been on my mind a lot this week, and the scare came at the right time.
Harsh lessons
You see, this type of stuff actually happens to people all the time — for real!
Mine was a glitch, but there are many folks who’ve seen their livelihoods wiped out in the blink of an eye.
Just go on YouTube and search “demonetized”. Or “KDP account terminated”.
I’ve been seeing a lot more content lately about how, for example, YouTube is cracking down on AI/faceless/automation channels.
Rules change. Platforms change. Companies go out of business. Anything can happen.
Fortunately for me, everything got sorted quickly and I was back on my online creator journey right away.
But there are 2 important lessons I think people need to take away from this incident.
Lesson 1
Earlier this week, I wrote about 1 extra thing I think online content creators need to do if they ever want to make real money online.
I’d urge you to check it out, but the thrust of the story was that, if you limit yourself to only one platform of business activity, you’re really limiting how much money you can make online.
By diversifying your side hustles, you also diversify revenue streams, and that accomplishes 2 important things:
- It keeps the money flowing if one spigot turns off
- It smooths out the wild earnings variance that creators experience
So at the end of the day, had my earnings here crashed to zero, I would have still earned money yesterday from YouTube, investments, etc.
Lesson 2
As I waited for a resolution last night — and despite the fact I believed this was the result of a glitch and would get resolved fairly quickly — my mind was spinning coming up with Plan Bs.
Should I become a full-time YouTuber?
Where would I do all my writing? My own website? My Substack newsletter?
Although I was pretty upset, it wasn’t like all hope was lost.
That’s because I’d worked super hard to give myself options.
My email newsletter is small but growing. Theoretically, I could add my email subs from this site and have a nice little springboard.
It took me a full year to achieve YouTube monetization, and although my earnings there are minuscule now, there’s huge potential if I actually directed all my efforts there.
Diversifying gives you an escape hatch if the worst happens.
Still beathing
As you all know, I’m a huge fan of this platform.
I’ve been an enthusiastic advocate/promoter for it — heck, almost my entire YouTube channel is devoted to it.
So I’m of course overjoyed to still be here.
But last night was an important reminder: if you put all your eggs in one basket, you’ll be the one who winds up broken (and broke) if it falls out of your hand.
Publish Every Day project update: Day 59
I want to see if I can make enough money to retire from commuter life within a year by publishing every day on different platforms and investing my earnings into passive income vehicles.
How much I need to retire: $250 CAD per day
What I earned on Day 59: $28.04 (writing) + $0.80 (YouTube) + $5.37 (dividend income) = $34.21 total
What I published yesterday:
- This post about 1 super easy way to supercharge your online earnings
- This Tweet promoting one of my stories:
My top 8 all-time most popular stories:
- The 1 main reason most people fail to make money writing online
- Do these 4 exercises and you’ll be in the best shape of your life
- The real truth of making big money writing online (they’re lying)
- Wow, YouTube just slashed its monetization requirement in half
- The 1 priceless book that kicked off my quit alcohol journey
- Why I’m writing like crazy now to bank big later
- Jacked Rob Lowe revealed the 1 harsh truth about staying fit at 60
- 1 reason you’ll succeed (or fail) making big money writing online