Summary

Simily is a new paying publishing platform that offers writers a way to monetize their content with a unique subscription model and social interaction features, distinguishing it from established platforms like Medium.

Abstract

Simily.co emerges as a fresh player in the content publishing arena, offering a monetization model where writers earn $0.02 per view, with a minimum payout threshold of$ 10. It accepts a wide range of written content, including fiction and non-fiction, and encourages the use of multimedia elements to enhance story discoverability. Unlike Medium, Simily provides three subscription tiers, allowing for different levels of access and interaction, and incorporates social media functionalities such as following, messaging, and group creation. The platform's inclusivity is noted, although it currently restricts erotic content due to payment processing agreements. The author's experience highlights the potential for growth and engagement on Simily, despite the scarcity of information about its origins and the challenges of building a following on a new platform.

Opinions

The author is optimistic about Simily's potential, having already earned a small amount and noting the platform's unique features.
The platform's social media aspects, like following and messaging, are seen as beneficial for community building and engagement.
Simily's acceptance of both internal and external views for payment is appreciated, broadening the potential for earnings.
The lack of detailed analytics on Simily is acknowledged as a drawback compared to other platforms.
The author values the ability to use one's own images and the availability of 'How To' videos for guidance, contrasting with Medium's Unsplash integration and text-heavy instructions.
The absence of 'Top Writers' and 'Top Earners' lists on Simily is noted, which may impact how writers gauge their success on the platform.
The author compares Simily favorably to Vocal Media, suggesting that early adoption could be advantageous, as reflected in their past experience with Vocal Media.

Simily: Is It Worth It?

Will this new paying publishing platform dominate 2022?

Medium, Vocal Media and NewsBreak. Everyone, please make way for the fourth publishing platform in town called Simily. I signed up to the platform immediately after I had read this piece by Kristina God outlining her experience so far.

What is Simily?

To sum it up, Simily is a paying publishing platform where you can submit just about anything. You get paid $0.02 per read and counts view from both internal and external members with a minimum pay out of $10. That means you need 500 views until you are eligible for pay out. If you do not hit 500 views in one month, the cents you do make are rolled over onto the next month.

I’ve been trying to find information on who is responsible for Simily.co, where it originates from and how long it’s been around, but none of this has come to light yet. Damn, I thought Google was meant to know everything?

Also, I decided to snoop around their social media sites to see how popular this platform really is. As of 16th January 2022, I can tell you;

227 followers on Instagram — unverified.
573 followers on Twitter — unverified.
415 followers on LinkedIn.
51 likes on their Facebook page — unverified.

What types of writing do they accept?

I’ve just gone and copied the below bullet points from their Story Guidelines:

Simily accepts both fiction and nonfiction creative writing.
All stories should be polished works free from grammatical errors.
There is no word limit. If your story is longer than a 15 minute read time, we recommend breaking it into smaller chapters.
While not required, adding a featured photo, category, and tag to your story will greatly help it to be discovered on our platform. Follow the instructions in the video below to learn how to add photos and tags to your story.
Restricted Content: due to our agreements with Stripe as a payment processor, we are unable to publish erotica on Simily at this time. As a community, we feel strongly about offering an inclusive publishing opportunity and hope to be able to include erotic content in the future.

So far I’ve noticed a mixture of both stories and journal pieces on the platform. Despite this, the platform indicates that storytelling was the main aim as they have ‘Story of the Week’ and ‘Poem of the Week’. Additionally, there is a drop down column at the top of the page with genres such as Sci-Fi Stories, Romance Stories, Horror Stories, you get the picture.

Three different subscriptions

With Medium, you either pay you’re $5 and you get the all-inclusive package or you pay nothing and get given nothing in return. With Simily, you can pay absolutely nothing and still get paid.

Currently, I have a Free Account but I intend to subscribe for Unlimited Access on pay day. Whenever I go to read a story, I can’t because my account is restricted and I can’t describe to you how annoying this is for someone who loves to interact with other people’s work.

Even though it costs a bit extra a month, and it’s an additionally fee alongside your Medium membership and Vocal Media if you have it, I advise you subscribe for Unlimited Access to not miss out on any opportunities.

Also a social media site

You can follow writers and they can also follow you. As I’m new to the platform, I’ve just gone and spam followed a bunch of people so I can build my following my get my name out there.

Not only this, but you can message other writers via inbox. Can you imagine being able to confront someone immediately after they leave a negative comment on your work? Ha! Please be advised this isn’t possible if you’ve got a Free Account.

On Simily, you can create your own groups. There’s a mini-Facebook within Simily were you can create and join your own groups and publish posts within them. Yesterday, I created a group called ‘Share Your Work’ as I noticed there was no group that gave writers that opportunity. There’s a group called ‘Medium Expats’ were a bunch of Medium members have congregated together.

How does it differ to Medium?

I’ve been a member of Simily since 9th January 2022, so I’ve been snooping around the platform and have noticed a number of differences with Medium:

1. They use PayPal AND Stripe.

2. They don’t have a Unsplash search engine for photos so you have to use your own images.

3. You can use it as a social media site too.

4. There are three types of subscriptions.

5. Pays for internal and external (paying and non-paying) views.

6. There is not a breakdown of statistics, you can only view how much you’ve earned per post.

7. There are no Top Writers and no Top Earners (so far).

8. ‘How To’ videos instead of countless words and numbered instructions.

So far, I’ve made $0.46 with 7 published stories and 23 total visits on Simily. At this current moment in time, I have 19 followers and have created a group called ‘Share Your Work’ which has 20 members. All of these numbers will increase 10 fold within the next months, I’m speaking it into existence.

When I started writing on Vocal Media in March 2020, it was still a very new platform and not many were willing to give it a try. I took the risk and even though I no longer write on the platform I still managed to waggle nearly $4,000 from them.

So far, I’ve copied over all my work-related articles from Medium. I think that’s what I’ll do in the long-run as I don’t dabble in the world of fiction and storytelling.

Will this new paying publishing platform dominate 2022? Only time will tell.

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