Member-only story
20 Weeks on Simily
Slow growth and hope for change
I’ve been writing at Simily for 20 weeks now and regularly updating my progress there with weekly posts here on Medium.
I missed last week’s update due to the recent passing of my father.
Still, the life of a writer is such that unless you “write on,” you, too, will perish.
So, I took some time to process and then dove back in to writing.
Here are the basics for this week’s update.
Simily has nearly 4000 members now and continues to grow at about 100 members a week.
The site is doing more to promote writers there (poem of the month, soliciting recommendations for excellent stories).
The founders are taking feedback and seeking to make changes — including an eventual migration to another hosting platform that is more user-friendly.
I’m glad to see the slow and steady growth. The platform could just stall out, but it keeps going forward.
I don’t know what Medium was like in the very early days, but it’s 10 years old now, and I know it has gone through many changes and updates.
Simily focuses on creative writing and to me, that’s a huge plus.
Here’s my most recent story there:
While the money is not exactly great at this point, it is fair (in my view) to consider the relatively small membership. As the site grows and evolves, writers putting out quality content should expect to earn there. Plus, they pay for reads (0.02 cents per read) not reading time — so, the poetry writer with short pieces can get paid just like the short fiction writer.
I think the payment system will evolve over time — in fact, the founders indicate that once subscriptions reach a tipping point, there will be a revenue sharing model — probably something like Medium’s.
I have so far viewed Simily as a potential competitor to Medium with a focus on fiction and creative writing. As the site continues to grow, I remain hopeful this is the case.
Have you been writing on Simily? What other platforms do you use for creative writing?
