I Absolutely LOVE Online Writing Every Day. You Can Easily Too.
Online Writing is a breath of fresh air and a chance to think clearly.
It’s MMC Monday, and I have been looking forward to it. After the week I have had, losing my Dad, it is nice to get back to some normality. Online writing is my sanctuary.
Sure, I had a few 121s last week, which were lovely. I love seeing the dogs. They bring me so much joy. Still, those sessions are over so fast, and they do not take up the hours of writing, editing, rewriting, editing some more, accidentally deleting, swearing a bit, and finally writing again until I’m happy.
Which is what I need at the moment. In my grief, and also with my health struggles, online writing is like a little cuddle at my desk. I wrap myself in my king-size fleece throw, have coffee at my side, set my chair to the right height, put the “nice” lamp on (that isn’t too bright and makes the room look warm), and maybe add a little music and type.
Sometimes, I don’t know what to write about, so I have to think about some of the suggestions in this post I wrote a while back. Other times, the words fly out of my fingers so fast that Grammarly can’t keep up and has a full-on meltdown at me while trying to change my quotation marks from straight to curly and whatever else Grammarly does. I always feel better for a keyboard-pounding session and getting my thoughts out into the world.
I write about dogs all the time over at
and at my websites, Freyavlocke.co.uk and Scrumperdinger.com, and I love doing so, but MMC is my ME space. It’s special to me as I can write about absolutely anything and get it all off my chest. It’s my therapy.If anyone out there is unsure about whether you should write or not or what to write about, you need your own version of MMC, where you can write whatever pops into your head and not worry about the consequences. It is honestly life-changing and much cheaper than seeing a counsellor.
Where to write?
As I mentioned before, I have several platforms and places I write. I even write fiction under a nom-de-plume when I have time, which is not often.
My dog writing is my job and my vocation. I do it because I enjoy it and because my career revolves around it. The researching ahead of articles helps me to learn things and stay on top of what is helpful for my clients. Plus, it gives me another way of getting useful information to dogparents.
I do all the other writing for pleasure, and the pressure is off. But all writing needs a home. Be it in a notebook, a diary, a manuscript or on the internet.
Blogging is the easiest thing to do once you get going. It doesn’t matter if you are a literary great; what matters is your desire to get words out. Whether you want to share your words or not is up to you. But if you want to share your words, you will want to find a home for your blog.
While there are thousands of places you can call your internet home, I can only really talk you through the ones I use and what I use them for. But they are enough to keep me busy!
WordPress
In my dog business, that home is WordPress.com, though you can write in many other places. I call that my home as my shop is there, and my client links are all there. I run my business from my website.
Plus, setting it up how I want costs me a fortune and is somewhat of a learning curve when you are not that techie. So I might as well use it for everything it’s designed to do.
That's not to say WordPress is no good for blogging; it's far from it. But it seems so much slower and less intuitive when I write for pleasure, not work. What you lose in website speed, however, you gain in functionality and customisation options. It’s swings and roundabouts.
While there is a reader ability to follow and check out other WordPress blogs, it is not as heavily promoted or used as Substack’s Notes or Mediums’ comment sections. So, you have to do more work with SEO and social media if you want to gain readership.
But when it comes to selling my services and products, my website is a clear winner.
Substack
For my blogging and article writing, I love it here on Substack.
Here, you write blog-style articles and send them out as newsletters to subscribers. It’s free and comes with a lot of easy things to use.
I like to add all my 121 dog clients to my email list on my dog newsletter so I can keep in touch with them easily, send them good stuff and enrol them in the Fun Not Fear® Club where we do more interactive stuff.
Sometimes, I crosspost stuff from here at MMC to my Medium account, but here is all I need for MMC. I often link my website articles to my dog newsletter to give clients and subscribers extra stuff to read.
I particularly love “Notes,” Substack’s in-house social media. You can find and chat with other writers and readers there and follow them as a person rather than subscribe to their newsletters. This is also a good way of making actual friends while introducing people to your newsletter without being salesy and too “buy my shit” in their faces.
I faff about a bit with the podcast options, but I have a speech impediment and find talking into a microphone rather challenging to keep up.
Substack is good because you own your email list and content in your publication, and you can monetise it easily through paid subscription options. I don’t worry too much about selling through MMC (though paid subs help to keep me in coffee)
Naturally, monetisation is a given for my dog business as I need to eat and pay rent somehow!
The only downside to Substack is the lack of customisation options. But in keeping it simple, they also keep the whole thing working correctly, which can’t be said for WordPress, which often feels like a dinosaur in comparison when writing online for more than five minutes at a time.
Medium
Some people have their writing home on Medium.com and only ever write there. You can create publications and have in-comment chats with other writers.
It’s an excellent place to build a following as the algorithm picks out your interests and places work in front of you (and your readers) on those topics. You choose the topics you wish your writing to appear under while publishing so you can find quite an engaged audience there.
You can also create publications, basically collections of articles grouped together under a publication title. If that takes off, you can get in both writers who wish to write for your publication and readers who follow the publication, too. These can grow massively, and submitting your work to other publications can extend your reach quite dramatically.
I have a publication there for dog stuff called The Happy Dog Journal, which I recently began to play around with, and my profile to publish whatever I like.
Publications mean that your profile doesn’t need a niche, so you can write whatever you want. The publications can then be used to sort your writing into more niche collections.
Medium is good if you want to monetise immediately, though it doesn’t pay as well as it used to. As I mentioned, you can crosspost there, so you do not need to make it into a ton of extra work. To get the best out of it, it has membership levels of £5 and £15 a month, which opens up you to earning and reading other members’ paywalled stuff.
Blogger
Blogger is free and quick to set up also. You can do all the basic things, like adding photographs and formatting your online writing to make it look good. There are some basic customisation options. It’s not a bad little place to be if you are looking for a way to get some words down and are not so worried about finding an audience.
I have used Blogger in the past and keep thinking about using it again to journal from my phone in bed. But I’m not sure I would have the time to keep up another load of writing! Plus, my poor partner is already neglected enough when I spend hours on the laptop. It might be a good starting point for a blogging newbie, though!
Today’s Sub Stats:
My views are way down … but that is to be expected. With my Dad shuffling off this mortal coil, I have been far less active; therefore, fewer people will have interacted with my newsletter.
If I’m going to find 100 free subscribers by 2025, I’ll need to fix that. Though in all honesty, I’m not that worried.
I can’t stand the “follow me, and I’ll follow you” crew that is permeating the world of online writing as all that does is give you a pile of subscribers who don’t read your stuff, and then Google and the Algo decide that your stuff must be crap if thousands of subscribers are turned off by it. So they stop showing it to everyone else too. It's better to have a few who actually enjoy your mumblings than a lot who don’t.
