The Orange Journal is Now Accepting Short Form

Yes, it’s true! Send in your stories with no strict word count. Aim for 150 words, but I’m no short form police!

As many of you know, I poured hundreds of hours into recruiting new writers during the month of December in an honest effort to build the publication. I tried my very best to thoroughly review each submission that was sent in within the same day. Heck, I even tried to publish it within the same hour!

I was successful at that for a while. I was happy because I knew TOJ writers could trust me to be prompt. The waiting game is so annoying. I know, I have been there.

We all have our own writing plans and when we finish a piece, we just want to get it out into the sea of Medium as fast as humanly possible. Why? So we can start earning money from it asap, of course.

There’s a lot to take into consideration with the Medium algorithm, and it will forever be somewhat of an enigma to me (considering it as its own entity,) ever-changing right under our noses.

Many folks like to publish on specific days or at certain times, decided based on analyzing their personal statistics, failures, and successes.

While I had Covid in the last two weeks of December, I got really backed up with submissions, many of which were 10+ minute reads or longer.

I love reviewing pieces these long, but I realized that both TOJ and the author could potentially get better reach by sprinkling in some shorter articles since Medium likes the newest, freshest article.

So why not introduce short form to The Orange Journal?

Short Form is Tender

I’m sure you have heard of the publication The Shortform on Medium. They were actually the ones who introduced me to such a concept. I loved publishing with them for a while because my pieces were always accepted within five hours. Sometimes, even less!

I could easily write a piece to submit to them in under ten minutes. This helped me maintain a steady flow of output.

One six-minute article followed by a shortform, then an eight-minute read accompanied by a neighboring shortform. Easy-peasy, and helped me take a load off. I mean, some of us write 150 words in a social media post/response, do we not?

But then I started paying attention and I noticed something.

My articles were barely getting any views. I considered the reason was because they were too short, and maybe Medium didn’t like that.

But that wasn’t it.

It’s because this pub (which is a wonderful place by the way) was publishing like 40+ pieces in one day! That’s like a lot! And far too many to give any one writer a fair chance at living on the home page, even for an hour.

The Difference of The Orange Journal

I try my best to space out submissions. A lot of times, I will schedule them for an hour apart. If I only have time to review a handful of submissions, I may publish five at a time because I know they will stay on the homepage for a day or two. But when I schedule the pieces an hour+ apart, it gives some breathing room and healthy exposure for each writer.

Why should you care?

The Orange Journal has 1.1K+ followers and I plan to keep growing it! I know that slow and steady wins the race, which is why I don’t accept every submission nor do I publish an exorbitant amount of pieces in one day.

While big and overpopulated publications like The Shortform and others may have more followers, the tactic is to grow the publication, not for the writers to grow their own personal following.

Does it make sense?

What I am trying to say is…if you publish your short form with TOJ, you might make more money and earn more exposure than you would at a pub with more followers than TOJ.

Just some food for thought. As always, never stop experimenting with where you publish, what content works, what days and times of day skyrockets your stats for your specific audience and demographic.

One writer Paul Walker from The Orange Journal published his review of publishing shortform in The Shortform and in TOJ, and he reported that he got much higher views on his shortform with The Orange Journal. No hate to other pubs, just love for TOJ! Don’t listen to me, ask Paul yourself!

What are you waiting for? Send in your short form post today!

Don’t forget to use #shortform as one of your tags.

Want inspiration for your first short form?

Tap into positivity at Live Life Now, my new blog✨

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