Tough times come, but we hold on. We keep fighting
A personal tragedy and the best finds of the week.
Dear friend
The past week was a roller coaster ride. As you might already know, a huge chunk of my monthly earnings comes from Medium. But Medium isn’t open for writers from India to earn money from their articles. There was a workaround and for about a year, I was able to earn money using this workaround.
However, a few days back, I received an email from Stripe asking me to submit a social security number to continue receiving payments. Since I’m not a citizen of the United States, I have no SSN, and hence, I can no longer continue earning money by writing on Medium.
This was a huge blow and it took me several days to process. The whole situation feels like a betrayal - after writing for one year and gaining close to 500,000 views with 10,000+ followers, Medium discontinued my earnings. It especially hurts because Medium recently started a publication called #StopAsianHate, but they won’t allow writers from Asian countries to earn money.
It was hard, but it led me to an important realization: as a writer or freelance content creator, you should never rely on one platform. It can shut down any day out of the blue, and you’ll be left high and dry.
I’m still in shock, but I have no one to blame. I’m working on some other freelance projects and pitching to different platforms for now. Several new possibilities are on the horizon, but nothing is finalized as yet. I’ll keep you updated as the days progress.
Aside from this tragedy, things have been good. Fortunately, my family and I are safe, and the curve of Covid19 cases in India is gradually coming down. Hopefully, this nightmare will be over soon and we can say hello to a brand new world filled with infinite potential.
With that, let’s dive into this week’s tips and finds:
Book recommendation of the week
Into This River I Drown by TJ Klune.
Genre: LGBTQ romance. Dealing with the death of a family member. Urban fantasy/magical realism.
Five years ago, Benji Green lost his beloved father, Big Eddie, who drowned when his truck crashed into a river. The police called it an accident and closed the case, but Benji knew something extraordinary had happened that caused his father to die.
Now, after the trail has gone cold, Benji finally finds some clues to help him decipher the mystery surrounding his father’s death. The truth is horrifying and might change his whole world.
It also involves a town festival on a stormy night, a knife gifted by a dead woman to her husband, and a man with blue wings who fell from the sky.
Stories I recently wrote
The articles I wrote this week were a combination of tips on personal development and making money as a writer. You can read them here:
The 10-Minute Morning Ritual to Set Priorities And Maximize Productivity
Writers, if You’re Not on This Platform, You’re Missing Out (If you’re a writer planning on building another stream of income, you should definitely check this article out).
An article I enjoyed reading
5 Reasons Why You Are Better Than the Other Person in the Room by Emily Wilcox. As Emily writes -
“Stop quantifying your value based on others, based on numbers, based external bloody things. Comparison is not a unit. Judgment is not lab equipment. You are not a science experiment, in which the decimal of your worth is the result. You are entire universes bursting to life in every dimension, at every hour.
You’re friggin’ stellar, simply because you are you.”
A question for you
With Medium no longer a viable option, I’m looking to build other sources of income. If I were to monetize this newsletter, what’s something you’d be willing to pay $5 a month for?
Book recommendations, reviews, summaries, and discussions.
Writing tips and help in building a daily writing habit.
Tips and guidance for how to make money as a writer.
Tips on self-improvement, productivity, relationships, and psychology.
Please reply to this email to let me know. It would barely take you two minutes, but for me, your reply would help me make a life-changing decision.
$5 a month might seem like a significant investment, but I promise I’ll cherish each and every one of you and treat your belief in me with the respect it deserves. You’ll not only be paying for my effort, but you’d also be supporting my dreams. That’s priceless, I believe. :)
If you found this letter useful, don’t forget to forward this to a friend or ask them to sign up for my newsletter. It’s free, and you know me, I only send valuable content.
That’s all from my end today. I’ll see you again next week. Till then, stay strong. Keep smiling and be awesome.
With love,
Anangsha.
Hey Anangsha, I was pretty bummed out by this news and I was looking for workarounds. It looks like people have gotten around this problem using a combination of Payoneer and Stripe.
https://medium.com/informatics/register-for-the-medium-partner-program-via-payoneer-f353c59e562d
Is this something you are familiar with? Does this approach not work?
Hey Anangsha, that's really sad to hear. But I must caution you that Substack seems to be using Stripe for processing payments too, so shifting from Medium to Substack might not do much good. I was looking into this a little bit and I found that international transactions for Indians are not supported in Stripe for individuals, but they might be possible if you register a sole proprietorship in your name and connect that to Stripe.
I wanted to know what your experience with Substack has been so far. I started a newsletter and asked one of my friends to join, but I'm not able to see any subscribers in my dashboard (including my own email ID!). Also, I used the search bar on the home page to search for "anangsha", and it turned up ZERO results. That's quite pathetic for a search service when your newsletter URL has your name in it. Do you find Substack reliable, or have you faced glitches like this as well?
Sorry for being so presumptuous, but I'm planning to write on Substack as well, and I would love to know what you think of it!