Illumination’s Pros and Cons
By: William, Dollar Bill
Tags: Illumination, Medium, Writing, Freelancing, Education

Illumination’s Pros and Cons

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Writers who seek an audience on Medium are all too familiar. Once having written your story, nobody wants to wait on publication. The problem is that if you self-publish immediately, no publication will accept your submission — as they almost all require that only unpublished drafts be submitted. Except one! And that's Illumination! There’s your first major pro right there! You can publish yourself — and then submit.

Here’s another pro: Illumination publishes almost everything that's submitted. So unless what you send is total garbage, it will appear in a publication with thousands of followers.

And a third pro is the editors are supportive and numerous enough that your article is published within a day at most — and often within hours. Ok! So what’s not to like? It all sounds like a win-win, right?

Illumination reminds me of the Craigslist adult section in its heyday. Because the publication has so many writers — and almost every submission gets published — your article only sees the light of day for a short period of time (usually just a couple of hours). After that, it’s replaced by more submissions and you move so far down the page that almost nobody clicks on your masterpiece.

Spoiled people won’t understand that reality. They think their stuff is the best and merits feature status forever. I’m not that egocentric. I get the program.

Con #2 has to do with who makes it to the top of the page. When I worked at a magazine with contents comprised of 70% advertising, my clients constantly badgered me about appearing in the “front of the book,” reasoning however correctly, that the first ten pages got many more calls than the last ten. And it’s the same with websites.

The top 5 pages of Illumination consist of the founders’ and editors' work almost exclusively. And these articles barely even rotate. There’s a stagnant quality that doesn’t work for me. I understand that it’s their site and they’re looking for member minute reads just as we all are.

But as a non-commissioned officer in the Illumination army, the best placement you can reasonably expect for your story will be pages down from the top.

And finally, I need to address the all-important analytic: Does publishing on Illumination get you more reads than publishing on your own?

I have just over 1000 followers — most of whom don’t really follow me. So if I self-publish, I don’t get very many views. Publishing on Illumination does garner me more views. But what I notice is my view to read ratio is much lower on Illumination than it is if I publish independently (which means in my own publications — or simply into cyberspace).

My ratio is actually very good by Medium standards. Until I check my Illumination articles. Then it can get as low as 10% while my self-published articles tend to be closer to 70%.

So what’s the bottom line here? Is Illumination worth your while? Actually, I think it is. Let’s face it. Almost everything you try on Medium to gain an audience doesn’t work. And that’s simply because there are so many wannabe writers on this platform and just so many readers — that only a small percentage actually make any real money.

For me? I know there’s no magical route to thousands of reads and dollars here. It’s a grind which most people give up on. But if you’re on a mission, any method that gets you anywhere is worth pursuing. And Illumination has just enough oomph to make it worth my while.

Hey! It’s not a miracle. But from where I sit, there are no miracles here. It’s just work work work — and pray pray pray.

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