Some Housekeeping and Updates
Okay, I’ve got good and bad news.
The bad news is that I will no longer be posting updates for Last Train Home on my blog. I simply don’t have the audience to justify keeping it here. No audience, to be honest. I mostly did it for myself, and loved that I could add pictures to my episodes. It was fun, and gave a good idea of where the story was going, or what key elements to expect. I’ll be pulling current episodes next week.
One of the main perks to this is finding a worldwide audience while Kindle Vella continues to lag behind, but also I’m not sure if Vella is here to stay or not. I’d like to have other options in case it folds in the future. Plus I have the option of side and semi-passive income.
I will say I had a lot of fun playing around with Ghost’s subscription tiers. I may add another paid tier later, but maybe bump it down to $2 a month / $24 a year. Not entirely sure what I would offer in return. Maybe a general support tier? I’ll figure something out.
Anyway, on to the good news!
Last Train Home was accepted into the Neovel premium program! I still need to update the cover to add the title and name, but what I have works so far. I’m currently staggering releases until I’m all caught up, at two episodes a week. After that, I’ll be transitioning to weekly releases. And while I said I wanted to keep them relatively short, I may bulk them up a bit by season 2. 1500 is nice, but I think longer episodes are preferred on Neovel. Plus if I’m only going to post once a week, might as well make it worth, no?
On an unrelated note, I’ve been playing around with Facebook ads, and while it hasn’t generated much in the way of clicks, I’ve gotten more engagement than I have in past attempts. Over 400 reactions and 21 (as of 5pm, 4/7/2022). I also noticed that someone started reading, with free tokens! So a few curious people have claimed their token bundle. The results may not be what I hoped for, but I have a chance of snagging a few readers, which I’ll gladly take.
Unfortunately, ads seem the way to go. I’ve been trying to put myself out there on Facebook groups. It worked more near the end of last month (shocker; everyone was scrambling for bonuses!), but the generosity seems to have dried up. I can say I’ve gotten a few readers this week; people who seemed genuinely enthusiastic to read my Vella, or at least a good chunk of paid episodes. And, much to my surprise, I gained a sudden fan for Fluid Bonding. She binged the first ten episodes! It was amazing and really made my day!
I’m also giving Reddit another try. There are other subs aside from the standard Kindle Vella ones, which are…pretty dead right now. And the Facebook ones aren’t that much better, if we’re being honest. It’s mostly the same faces and stories propping each other up.
I’ve already left a few groups I was in because I was getting stressed out and my depression was being agitated…seeing other people do well doesn’t do much for me, it seems. Not when I’m struggling to gain traction. Popularity contests just aren’t my thing! I do plan on leaving the promo groups entirely, as my reads have been flatlining. I’ll stick with ads and other avenues for now.
That’s all for now. Oh, and I’m still debating on Thursday or Fridays updates for my blog. I liked Thursdays, but Fridays are calling to me…
Edit: I decided to upload some old posts from a former blog. It's just my updates on a goal I had of clearing my gaming backlog, back in 2020. I stopped updating, but I want to get back into the habit. It was fun, talking about my games.
