Simily Has a Problem, Besides Google Thinking I Can’t Spell

Comparing earnings between Medium and Simily

When I ran across an article espousing the wondrousness of Simily, my brain latched onto the idea of it like a desperate calf on a teat.

A platform relatively new that I could get in on the ground floor of? And it pays really nicely per view?

And it is built with fiction authors in mind?

Holy crap, take my money, please!

With my back catalogue of past unposted and published short stories as fodder in my hands, I went to the website to sign up. I had to check it out.

Problems began before I could even start.

Signing up was easy enough. Input the information, sacrifice a chicken or two to the password gods, and off we go to the races. Right?

Right?

Not a great start…

I clicked on the little stories tab at the top of the page, just to explore around and see what my fellow authors had put out to the universe.

That’s when the first error came across the screen.

“Sorry, nothing was found! Try a different search term.”

Wait. All I did was click the tab at the top. I didn’t do a search term. I merely wanted to explore the content available.

It wouldn’t even let me do that.

I’m a blind guy. Getting around the internet is already difficult for me, at best. That particular day was a rough one for my eyes and I admit I didn’t have the patience to deal with it further.

So I closed the browser and moved on. It disappointed me, but I’m the guy who can get excited about things and this was a bit of a blow to the potential income I thought the idea could garner.

Fast forward another week, and my mind kept nagging me.

Try it again, Ira, it said. Maybe it was just having problems that day.

Fine, brain, says I. I’ll cave.

Logging back in, they greeted me with much more appropriate results. I could finally see stories my fellow authors posted before. Groups were showing up, and I tentatively joined them. I admit I still have no clue how to function within them as much as I should.

I decided the best way to get things going would be to dive in. Heck with sticking in a toe… just do it.

Remember, I’m one of those super prolific story writers. I can do 6000–8000 words a day easily and my brain comes up with ideas faster than I can write them down.

I know I’m lucky with that and others struggle, but I am thankful that’s never been an issue for me.

I have about five dozen stories I’ve published in various places, including for free on my website. I thought it’d be a splendid chance to make use of some of those dusty relics.

I spent some time getting used to the interface on Simily and it was within only two posts I came to the realization it’s built on a WordPress framework.

Ahh my old friend WordPress. How I love thee.

You see, I am familiar with WordPress in ways some other authors might not be. I have been building websites for years, and have almost exclusively built them on that backbone because of the ease-of-use.

I thought, Oh, hey, you’ve got this. Should be no problem!

Boy, was I wrong.

The interface itself is simple to get around over there. It’s a chopped-down version of what you would see if you were using a more personal site built on WP. Publish, Save, Preview, with a dropdown menu to choose the tags and categories you’d like the story to appear in.

The editor, as well, is reasonably easy to navigate.

That’s not where the real obstacle lies.

Where it gets troublesome is when you actually try to publish it.

One of the biggest issues with WordPress…

WordPress, as a personal platform or smaller-scale business, works well. It’s fast, secure (with added plugins), and simple to use.

Where the issues start is in the database that tracks, collates, and organizes all the data on the site.

WP has some notorious issues with handling traffic. The database just can’t handle massive amounts of it coming in at once and will crash out the site constantly.

In my time on Simily, I’ve spent hours trying to post things, arguing with it over and again to save the text, put the images in, and building the tags. I’ve since read horror stories of people who have lost all of their work because they were typing it directly into the editor instead of pasting it in from another program. The save function failed and it was all gone.

Please learn from others. Write your stories and articles outside of website editors, and just paste it in when you’re done. Save yourself the hassle.

One evening, I spent over two hours getting a single story to publish, because the tags would not go through. Every dang time I hit the save button, it would hang, sitting there stuck for a half hour before I finally gave up and reloaded the page.

It still took me until the next day before I could get it out to the world.

That’s ridiculous. That’s not how things should be at all.

I’ve encountered other bugs, too.

The glaring 403 Forbidden error that happens whenever someone posts one of their stories to a group is a big problem. It’s something so simple — just show the cover image as it does to the rest of the site — but the fact even that can’t be correct puts me off.

The frustrations are hard to get past.

As of the time of this writing, I am still using a “free month” I was given because of a kind person’s code. After that ends, though, I’ll have to switch over to a paying account at $6.99 a month.

When compared to, say, Medium at $5.00 a month, staying on Simily makes me hesitate.

Let’s compare a few numbers.

So far, I’ve published about the same amount of stories on both Simily and Medium. It’s all been within about the same time period, as well. I think the first I posted here was perhaps a day sooner than I started doing on the other platform.

In that time, I have earned $0.58 on Simily.

I’ve gained $3.70 on Medium.

The Medium screenshot does not reflect what’s been earned this month so far. That’s just for February.

I know the amount per view on Simily is supposed to be higher, but the engagement there has been woefully thin, despite me attempting to channel people over to my page.

Shining the same spotlight on Medium, I’ve gained hundreds of views and more money for much less effort.

With those numbers in mind, which should I put my focus on?

Here’s the thing, folks. I am disabled because of blindness. I have only a limited range of things I can focus on per day before my eyes and irritation levels get beyond my control and I just can’t do any more.

When I look at the time and energy I have to put into writing the articles or stories, marketing, publishing, editing (the bane of my existence), and more for my business, all while being blind, it gets overwhelming.

There’s only so much I can do.

Medium has so far proven to me it’s the winner in this competition.

Simily does have one advantage, and it’s hard to deny.

I am a prolific fiction writer. As I mentioned earlier, coming up with stories is easy for me, and I enjoy doing it.

That is one area Simily has the advantage. It’s marketed toward fiction writers more than anything.

However, the issue with it is a lot of writers are, unfortunately, not also readers. It seems most people there are posting stories, marketing themselves, and moving on without spending any time reading what others have as well.

That’s a problem. I love reading and do it as much as I can. I’ve spent hours of my day on both platforms filtering through what interests me and sharing it with others.

Seeing the results others are getting there, though, I have to wonder if I am a sort of a unicorn in the equation.

The decision is not easy to make.

Whether or not I continue there is something I’ll have to decide as time goes on. I’m not too far, at this point, from having to pay real money for the first time there. I’m extremely limited income, though, so I have to count my pennies wisely.

I am already seeing if I keep up with things on Medium, membership might just pay for itself. I’m not expecting the same over there.

Because of that, I think my primary focus of energy will be here and if I have anything left in the tank, I’ll drop a story or two over there and see what happens.

I think, though, they have a few fundamental problems that need to be addressed before they find genuine success.

I will keep crossing fingers and fingering crosses that, on either platform, I can find some achievement as well.

What about you? Have you tried Simily yourself? Or are you avoiding it until things over there change?

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About me:

I am an author with over a dozen books and dozens of short stories published. I have experience with both traditional and self-publishing, and love to discuss the pros and cons of both.

Why do I write? Because I am blind and live on woefully low disability payments each month. The government graced me with trying to live on about $700 per month, and I decided to start publishing because I also like to be able to eat.

If you like my work and want to support it, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi.

You can also find my paintings there, and I am available for commissioned work for more.

Thank you from the depths of my soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” in this moment.

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