Becoming an abouthe.net author
Registration –mandatory via LinkedIn– is a facility that ensures, apart from security, content quality for our reader and recognition for author, conditioning the writer to have an active LinkedIn account. Logging with LinkedIn will create an author account by registering the email; only if we will approve the account, at the next log-in, the Linkedin plugin will recognize the email. Therefore, even if the LinkedIn password is changed, logging will still be possible, but aboutthe.net doesn’t and will never have access to the password.
Payment: from the $0.40 per view, 90% will go directly to the author account; from the $30 per 100 posts subscription, 90% will go directly to the author account. From the author account the earnings can be instantly withdrawn into the author’s Paypal/Stripe account. The author must have a verified Paypal/Stripe account.
Post rules:
Minimum 500, maximum 2500 words; preview maximum 250 characters; only one photo per post- that can be a collage of photos.
Photography/Drawing category has first photo as preview and the other two are locked as premium content.
A video of max 128mb size can be added to any post; a multiple-page pdf can also be added with/as content.
An author must publish at least 12 posts/month; that is, at a maximum post length. We can’t have authors who can’t commit to…authoring. The monthly average number of views per post has to be 200. Anything less than that and the time spent on writing will be better spent on different activities.
Content rules:
Personal experience and knowledge are the keywords.
There are no rules per se, but we will not tolerate anything even remotely containing or related to pornography, drugs, alcohol and weapons misuse, politics, discrimination of any kind. As examples:
We accept adult content with a border limit before explicitly detailed nudity and sexual acts, if it is justifiable by category nature (i.e erotic literature, sensual photos), it is expressed in a decent manner (such as 50 Shades of Grey or Aphrodite) it stays within the US and UK legal limits and it is marked as adult content. We will not accept any real or fictional explicit nudity and sexual acts, any links or insinuations towards pornographic or adult websites.
We accept content referring to drugs & alcohol only as in a post about how to fight addiction; we will not accept content referring, implying or insinuating any form of drugs & alcohol misuse.
We do not accept any political content other than historical, ergo minimum 25 years old.
Joining aboutthe net of readers
Website main pages are free to access, but author posts are locked as premium content.
To access author content, a minimum of 5 views x $0.40 or an author subscription of $30 for 100 posts (-$10 discount) must be bought.
The reader must register and login for buying and preserving unspent access and ensure smooth future purchases. For mutual security reasons, we do not accept and store bank/credit card details, so content access must be bought via Paypal/Stripe only.
Views and subscriptions are not transferable or refundable and do not expire-they are not time-limited; a post paid for once by either method can always be accessed.
A view offers permanent access to one post only.
An author subscription offers permanent access to 100 posts of the reader’s chosen author. If the author doesn’t have 100 posts yet, the subscription will apply to future posts until the number is reached. Posts already available through a view will not affect the subscription.
A post can be just a suite of photos, a written page, an uploaded video, a text file or all the above, partially or simultaneously.
How other websites pay authors
YouTube. Though it’s a video platform only-no written content, no upload of documents or photos, here are the facts. After a certain threshold (so nothing for all previous work) of approximately 10k in viewers and subscribers, the payment system is based on the number of ads viewed, around 0.03$ per ad, going up to $5/1.000 views. With us, the 1.000 views brings $200. Sources:https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Chow-do-i-earn-revenue
Instagram For an average of 10k followers, around $1400/month: create sponsored posts for brands, become an affiliate and make a commission selling other brands’ products, sell products or services. With us, for the same amount, all an authors needs is 7 posts with 1000 views each-in a day, week or a month, content quality-depending.
Twitter SuperFollow allows creators to set a subscription for readers. A subscription for reading 280 characters tweets. That’s all.
Sources: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/super-follows https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/
Buy me a coffee
As of April 2021, BMC charges a transaction fee of 5 percent on any support received by the creator. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Me_a_Coffee).
So, a percentage is imposed on an optional income. Aboutthe.net takes on itself all payment processing fees.
Medium partner program: based on member reading time (fast readers, stay away?!)-essentially, an algorithm based on how much time of the total reading time a paying member spends on an author’s story, (convoluted) story stats metrics, even claps(!). Monthly-not instant– payments, average earnings- $500/month. With us, this amount can be made with 5 posts and 500 views each.
Sources: https://medium.com/blogging-guide/how-do-claps-work-on-medium-b2897784ce6b- https://medium.com/blogging-guide/how-much-money-can-you-make-writing-for-medium-a3cf0c9c7533
Quora: probably, in the first link below, the most upvoted, unpaid as all others, answer: “ I have been here for 15 months. I have answered over 2000 questions so far. Not a single person, not a single follower has given me a single rupee so far. And neither has Quora paid me anything to answer questions here. I don’t think anyone is making any money by answering questions here. Our rewards are the satisfaction we get, the upvotes on good answers and the friendly comments that some readers post after reading our posts.”
Quora used to pay for questions (we’d have two: why for questions? isn’t the answer where the research and hard work is put into?) and their Partner Program, as of September 30, is closing for the English communicating world. Sources:https://www.quora.com/Can-you-earn-money-by-answering-Quora-questions https://quorapartners.quora.com/
