The Guide to Wattpad (& Creative Writing)

Can you get Paid by Wattpad?

Currently (September 2019), information given by Wattpad about monetisation schemes and programs are brief: focused on how amazing it is that writers can now earn money, as well as gain a following, reads, votes and comments. Rather than telling you how it works, what money can be earned and how accessible these features are. Truth is, often paid schemes are exclusive or invitation-only. Meaning only a handful of writers will benefit out of millions. There are dubious monthly figures of $1000-2000 banded about, but exact amount of how much writers can earn isn't given. For me, these are all red flags for a heavily baited system still in baby stages.

Here's a skeptical run-down of Wattpad's past and present monetisation schemes and how they work:

The last scheme (before the current one/s), was the Wattpad Futures Program: an invitation-only scheme placing ads between some chapters of stories, giving a percentage of money to the writer. But, Wattpad abandoned this in its 'beta' version admitting it had been scaled up too quickly without quality checks on the stories or a proper 'infrastructure' .

With the end of Wattpad Futures was an emphasis on Wattpad Studios and Wattpad Books. Studios supposedly runs the making of Wattpad stories into films, whereas Books is a physical book publisher. But both are still fairly new, with Wattpad Books being introduced at the beginning of 2019. They claim to use a data algorithm so they definitely 'know' which Wattpad stories will succeed. So, even though these are emphasised as having a dramatically positive impact on Wattpad users, I'm not convinced those any further down the food chain than the elite handful, with millions of reads and a global following, will really see benefits.

Another current scheme started in its beta as Wattpad Next, introduced in late 2018, with 'coins'. Which lets readers get so far before they have to pay with Wattpad 'coins' which translates to money. Books can also be exclusive from the start. Wattpad claims this has been very successful, although it started out with only 50 stories and its not clear if this pool has been increased since.

Wattpad Next was then changes names to the Wattpad Paid Stories program. But, the information Wattpad gave on this is washy and idyllic including a 'Story DNA machine learning team' kind of algorithm which spits out apparently the 'best content' of Wattpad for them to make paid, who then get 'editorial coaches'. Which makes me think it must be a very small group because large-scale this would be extremely costly and time-consuming. However, they do give six fairly helpful factors that bump you up the list/lead to paid success: storytelling (/imagination), quality, originality, personality, marketplace (slots) and community (/conduct). But the 'marketplace' factor is the crucial one and out of the hand of writers. Unless Wattpad have significant funds, the quantity of Paid story slots is unlikely to broaden much.

In conclusion, when new monitisation schemes are announced, Wattpad are telling writers what they want to hear. Saying this, although the likelihood of earning from Wattpad is very low, it's not completely impossible. And before the masses can benefit, these programs need to be beta tested on individuals, so why not promote Wattpad's best on other platforms first? If mass, accessible, monitisation is ever to occur, I think it'd be far in the distant future. Current specific earnings figures are unavailable and I think the example figures could easily be the best picked of a small sample size.

If money is something you're interested in from your writing, work hard on improving, maturing and developing your style, narratives and plot structures. Certainly improve the 'imagination', 'quality' and 'originality' of your work, whilst positivity engaging in the community like Wattpad stated. Work towards the completion of stories free of any typo, spelling, grammar or punctuation errors, edited out with a fine-tooth comb. Politely promote work and build an audience. But have realistic expectations. For example, I'm more likely to finish a story and publish it on Amazon eBooks, than keep hopes up about being paid by Wattpad in the near future.

Hopefully some day Wattpad will be like Youtube and most writers will be monitised.

What are your thoughts on this?