Can You Make Money With Your Own Short Story Website?
Yes, you can. Perhaps the best proof is Wattpad. As of 2021 Wattpad has been profitably sold for $600 million to a big technology and media company in South Korea. But this website was not created for the readership of big company executives but rather for people just starting out in their entrepreneurial dreams of starting their own small companies who might become big someday.
So this article will tackle the question: Can a small business entity like a one person business earn good money from creating short stories preferably in their own website?
The Dream of Most Writers
Most writers dream of becoming published authors. A published author is a writer whose work has been accepted for publication by a reputable publishing house. Almost all of the financially successful published authors write fiction.
Names such J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, James Patterson, George R.R. Martin are just some of the big names in the circle of published authors. Many writers hope to be one of these people one day.
These authors write full length novels but they also write short stories. However short stories are not good money makers for many of these authors. This is the reason why most successful authors do not write short stories.
This is actually good news for short story writers. This means they have less competition from established and known authors. Even though money from short stories are nothing compared to novel length stories they can be written much faster and can be sold as a cheaper alternative.
This is the reason why many lesser known authors change their strategy from writing novels to short stories. The dream is still there for many authors to write a successful novel but for now their dreams are to be able to have other income sources so they can continue writing.
One of this other income source is writing many short stories. By writing a large number of short stories they hope to compensate for the cheap price of their short stories. Writing in large numbers also give them a wider reach to customers.
How To Earn from Short Stories
The traditional way to earn from short stories is to submit them to publications that accept short story submissions. These publications have all largely gone online now except for a few that still print paper copies of their publications for small circulation.
Making money this way is very hard. There is a lot of competition between many short story authors and the pay can be very low. I even saw some online publishers offering rates much lower than content mills. This is certainly bad news.
There are even online publications that do not pay authors but rather offer only author credits. There are even online publications that have been reported to steal the story ideas of the authors who submitted their work to them.
The length of short stories vary. Many online publications for example have a limit of less than 5,000 words for each short story. This figure could go as low as 500 words. The trendy flash fiction short stories could even be composed of less than 500 words.
This is a good thing for many short story writers as the established strict word length rules are fast easing. This means that there is more opportunity for writers to earn more money for less time. This change is very much evident with how Amazon now treats short stories. They have created a special category for it in their e-commerce store.
But one thing is clear based on the actions of Amazon. Short stories are starting to encroach on the market of long format stories. This could be the result of how society is developing. People are becoming more and more busy as the number of recreation products increase.
How Do Short Story Websites Earn Money
For the big book e-commerce sites like Amazon they make money by splitting the revenue with authors. Everytime an author’s book is sold for example they keep a certain part of the profit with them and give the rest to the authors.
The much smaller websites depend on other monetization factors such as website subscriptions, ad revenue and donations from readers. For example if you Google the search keywords “short story websites” you will be presented with articles that list websites that accepts short stories.
A more specific example is short-story.me. This is a generalist short story website that features many genres like horror, science fiction, romance and so on. This is the only short story website that I have found that besides asking for donations also uses ad monetization.
This website could be a good example to follow in terms of monetization especially if you can keep the maintenance costs of updating the website down.
Some of these websites like PSEUDOPOD can be very forward looking. Besides offering short stories in text form they also offer them as podcasts. Even their monetization is more varied. Instead on relying on ad revenue they have Patreon, donations and subscriptions.
But most if not all of these websites accept short story submissions and pay a bit of money or offer author credits. Whatever what form of submission incentive you use, accepting submissions is the fastest way of acquiring short stories in your website.
Having Your Own Website
You can make money from short stories by submitting it to any or all of the websites that accept short stories. But by now you must be thinking: Why don’t I just set up my own short story website?
Let us take a look at this possibility. First you will need website hosting. This should not be a big problem. Website hosting is cheap these days and even getting more cheaper as time passes. For as low as between $100 to $150 a year you can have website hosting subscription.
Since a short story website is more text intensive than image intensive there is a very big chance that your hosting needs will not get more expensive in the near future. Besides website hosting costs most of your needs can be met by free softwares.
But as a beginner short story website owner can your new website be profitable at the onset? Let us say in just a few months? Can you easily scale up to the level of for example Wattpad?
Is Wattpad the exception to the rule or your inevitability? What I am saying is that in the future: would your website be the next Wattpad?
Only time will be able to answer this question but there is one very good thing set about by Wattpad. According to Forbes: Wattpad generated a net profit of $19 million in 2018. This happened by only having 145 employees.
These figures are very interesting especially when Forbes emphasized that most of the revenue of Wattpad came from ads. This monetization model is not being used by many of their competitors but you can also follow this as a beginner.
This also proves that there is money from ads in short stories. Ads are the bread and butter of many websites and knowing that even short story websites can generate money by ads is very good news even for beginner short story website owners.
You can elect to be a part of Amazon, Wattpad and the likes, you can submit to online publications but the best recommendation is to also have your own short story website. In your website you can monetize your short stories the way you want it. It would also build your writer credentials as you distance yourself from the rest of the writers who are using other websites to showcase their work.
However there is a disadvantage in being alone. And that is you do not have the support and the visibility that established publications for example have. But no matter where you are trying to attract readers to your short stories, whether in your own website or by submissions to online publications your visibility to readers is the problem.
However this is the problem of all website owners online and not only short story websites. Even if you use Amazon for example, visibility to readers is still the problem. At least your own website increases your chances of online visibility.
The Short Story Website Blueprint
Creating a short story website business is not a big puzzle. Many have done this before you and more or less the blueprint for starting one is already well known:
1. Create your website and pay for website hosting services.
2. Decide if you want to be a niche or generalist site. This means you either decide if you want to publish short stories based on one genre or publish all kinds of short stories. By genre I mean romance, science fiction, horror, suspense and so on.
3. Ask for short story submissions and either share the profits, pay outright or give author credits to those that submit to you. You can also write your own short stories.
4. Monetize.
5. Expand. This means like Wattpad who expanded to book publishing, films and so on.
Can You Do It?
The blueprint is clear and all laid out but can you create your own short story website business?
-The website hosting part is easy. All you need is to pay $100 to $150.
-Deciding to be a niche or a generalist short story website is a question of personal preference and is also easy.
-Can you attract short story submissions even if you only initially pay nothing to submitters?
-Can you attract them with non-monetary payment like author credits?
-You have to solve this problem if you want to fill your website fast with short stories.
There is an alternative solution however and is one you would probably do during the early stages of your website business: Write your own short stories to fill up your website.
Is this possible? Can you write at the minimum one short story a day? This equates to 365 short stories in a year. This is a lot of lot of short stories. If you are able to do this you won’t need a lot of outside submissions but would still have a decent sized short story website.
How many hours does it take you to write a short story? Speed of writing a short story is very important especially if you are not a full-time writer. Consider that it would take months before you can compile a decent sized number of short stories even while writing full-time.
What I have just discussed is your one year investment. I hope your ad revenue would be sufficient to recoup the money and time you invested in your website.
If website hosting is $150 then your cost per month would be more or less $13. Do you think you would earn $13 a month just to recoup your website hosting fees?
Consider that the time you spent writing the short stories as a labor of love. How so? You did it in your spare time when you are not doing anything that is productive enough to earn you income.
Any earnings you have after $13.00 per month is already passive income. This is assuming your website does become available for monetization at the very basis with ads.
But wait. You would continue to write more short stories which could mean more revenues. And with more revenues you have more money to spend for your website. Who knows maybe someday you could be another Wattpad success story. But it takes time and perseverance.
Going back to $13.00 that is about 40 cents a day. Not even coffee change. So there is no big loss for you monetarily if your website does not earn any income. You can still submit or sell your short stories elsewhere online like in Amazon.
Creating Story Ideas is the Big Factor
Typing and writing speed can be improved with practice. But how fast can you think of a short story?
When I first tried writing short stories numbering 2,000 words and more I felt I was staring against a blank wall. I couldn’t think of one worthy enough of writing. I could think of a few but having known many short stories in many genres during my lifetime I told myself that I have nothing unique to offer.
But after reading short stories from other authors and listening to many audiobooks I began to see an insight of how short stories are made. I listened to author interviews and podcasts.
I read or listened to short stories from Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Isaac Asimov and so on. I learned from a few of them that it is important to have an entire story outline but as a writer you have to let your imagination take control of you.
Sometimes you do not need a completely unique short story but rather you can retell a story but give your own twist on it. You can for example change the time, setting and ending of an already familiar story.
I do not claim to be an expert but this new way of thinking has helped me to write a few short stories. I no longer wanted to create a story so unique that it would shock my readers but rather I write short stories for the sake of writing a story. I would like my reader to be entertained first and just hope that it opens their mind to new world of possibilities.
Conclusion
The short story market used to be a difficult market to make money with but times are changing. It is still a difficult market to make money with but the way society is progressing the future looks more and more better for short story writers.
Creating your own short story website is highly recommended as not only it increases your online exposure it also increases the possibility of you having a profitable website business. The most important thing is not to go after the elusive bestseller book status but to just write a story that you hope your specific readers would read. You can’t please everyone.
You may be interested in my Writing Article. It is titled: Writing For A Living.