Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Another flash fiction piece: Pure Magic

D.J. wrote: "I enjoy your posts Sam. Keep going. I was glad to read your latest one-good for you!

I see what you mean about the changes now, Dale. I like a graph. I particularly like the amusing lifetime earni..."

Yeah, $2 in a lifetime! ;-) Look at it this way. That's infinitely better than $0 in a lifetime, mathematically speaking . . .

Sam (Rescue Dog Mom, Writer, Hugger) wrote: "Dale, Thank you for noticing these new features and passing them on to the rest of us, Hugs!

All Medium Members,
I'm glad I joined. I'm not earning much, but it covers the fee. I'm honing my writi..."

I don't think most of us earn all that much from Medium. I've more than covered my fees by now, and the extra income is nice, but if I get a tank of gas out of it each month that's probably about it.

I really like your work, Sam. We all worry about quality in some measure, but don't stress over it. You're better than you probably think.

Alex wrote: "I had a similar thing, Dale, one of my stories got picked up, somehow, by a Chinese news site of some kind and ended up with over 4.5k views. Unfortunately, Medium doesn't count them towards earnin..."

Yeah, we only get money for Medium members who view/read/clap for stories, so if someone goes in as a guest from an external link and doesn't sign in, it won't count for money. But as Carole says, it's at least exposure, which could translate into money somewhere down the line.

We hope...

I noticed a couple of things on Medium. First, I had an astonishingly high number of views on September 16, hitting 652 for that day. Previously, I've had a few days topping 100 and even 150, but not many, so this is a crazy number for my stories.

Second, while looking over my statistics page, I discovered what seems to be a new feature. Before, when I clicked on the title of a story, the graph at the top changed to reflect the stats for just that story. Clicking it again reverted to the aggregate numbers.

But today, clicking a story title calls up a new page I haven't seen before, showing details for that story. The new page shows a graph for that story with Medium and external referrers broken out. It also shows traffic by source, and even the total earnings to date for the story (if earnings have been paid out for it yet). There is also a section about readers' interests, but I'm not seeing anything there, so I don't know if that doesn't work yet or if I just don't have enough readers to show it.

Another thing I noted (from the new page) was that the story that lead my views for September 16, I Did All That?, garnered most of its views from a service called flipboard.com. It's been responsible for 95% of the hits, with Medium itself only generating 5%. I'd never heard of flipboard. It's apparently a mobile news aggregation app. They must have picked up my story for a feature or something, and a lot of people saw it.

But I have no idea why they would do that. That story was just an off-the-cuff thing I threw together fairly quickly. Odd.

My latest Publishous story: Lessons Learned From Flash Fiction

Píaras wrote: "Shared on my Twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/EbookReviewer & https://twitter.com/ReviewsEmerald"

Thank you!

Jennie Rosenblum just reviewed True Death. She previously reviewed The Fibonacci Murders and might do Ice on the Bay as well (I hope!). Please share around if you can. Thanks!

Carole wrote: "https://medium.com/@caroleproman/10-t..."

Okay, I'll bite. Here's mine.

Sam (Rescue Dog Mom, Writer, Hugger) wrote: "The link for "I Did All That?" lands on "Falling." Knew you'd want to know and fix it."

Thanks, Sam, It's fixed now.

I have two new stories this weekend:

"Falling," a science fiction short story published in Lit Up.

"I Did All That?" on how a body of work grows, published in The Writing Cooperative.

Go with it. I certainly can't think of anything better. (Good job, Carole!)

My second Publishous story: Every Great Story Starts With an Idea

Carole wrote: "Happy birthday, Dale!!"

Thank you!

Theodore wrote: "
Sounds intriguing, Dale. Good luck! And happy birthday. The more of them you celebrate, the longer you live! It's a fact! "

Thank you! And yes, that's a fact. I had a friend, too, who had a foolproof plan for living to be 100. He said all you have to do is get up every morning from now until you're 100 and do one pushup. Just one! But, he warned, if you missed a day, you might not live to be 100. ;-)

Alex wrote: "Best of luck with it. "

Thank you.

Ice on the Bay will be featured in a Bargain Booksy promotion on Sunday, September 16, 2018. The Kindle price is $3.99 on Amazon.com, with all editions on sale at the publisher site. Thank you!

Small update. I've set myself a goal of having a business plan and pitch deck ready by my birthday (which is now less than a week away). The business plan is basically done, although I need to go over it to make sure it all makes sense. The pitch deck will be easy, since that's just a PowerPoint based on the business plan.

I know a guy who has agreed to send the materials around to potential investors if he thinks it sounds good. He's done mentoring and investing for startups in the past, although he doesn't have time for a new project himself. But he has contacts.

I'm a bit nervous about the level of investment required to kickstart the beast, but we'll see how it goes. More info later.

Angel wrote: "Shared."

Thank you!

Medium publication Publishous invited me to submit. Somewhat surprisingly, they've already published my short story Safe Room. (I didn't expect to see it until over the weekend.)

I've submitted this story to a number of top SF magazines and was rejected every time, so I went with Medium as a way to make at least a dollar or two on it. I hope you enjoy it!