Getting paid for writing short stories

It looks like a silly question. Anyone can write a story, send it to a magazine and get paid. However, the truth behind getting your stories published even in non paying magazines is hard to imagine. Magazines aren’t really short of writers. In fact, a lot of people write fiction, but not all of them get paid, let alone get published online or in print.

You’re wrong I got my stories published online.

Of course there are numerous ways to have an audience and publish your stories and eventually make fans as potential buyers of your craft in the long run: Booksie and Storywrite are examples among others.

But, if you want to get paid you can either do it the amateur way or the professional way. The former consists of sending your fiction to a paying website like Triond and Hubpages after signing up and publishing your pieces of fiction and driving enough traffic to get paid through advertisements.

I have myself a couple of short stories in Hubpages that I serialized in several parts. You can have a look here:

• The Dawn of Post Humans ( a science fiction short story in three parts )
• The Gods of Knowledge ( a fantasy short story )

Keep in mind that your short stories shouldn't be less than 500 words so as to be indexed in the search engine. They should not be published elsewhere to avoid issues with duplicate content.

I already know that. Isn’t there any other way?

There is also PatronQuowhere you submit your work and get paid by the Patrons ( your supporting community ) whose members will get themselves displayed on your writers’ pages in return as a form of advertisement.

And the professional way?

For the professional way you better determine what kind of stories you write and what fiction market is willing to pay for them.

Wait! How could I possibly know?

Fortunately, you are not going to search internet at random. Duotrope offers a large database for magazines sorted by genre. In other words, if you are a fantasy writer you can run a search within Duotrope to pick up the magazines which publish fantasy and submit to them after following their guidelines.

There are several search options and you can narrow down your search to only submit to a professional paying market ( 5 cents per word ) if you are confident about your talent. But be realistic. Burgeoning writers make their professional pay after long months of honing their craft. Nevertheless, they can make it if they are good enough with token payment ( 5 $ or less ) for an accepted piece of fiction or/and receive a contributor copy of the magazine where their story appears on. Anyway before tackling those professional market, make sure you read some free online guides about selling short fiction like The Quester's Guide to Writing Short Fiction That Sells. This way you will have a detailed idea about the reality of pro fiction markets.

What if I fail to get paid?

You won’t if you persist. Writing short stories and getting them published in magazines demand patience. The quality of your work will be judged on its own merit despite the fact that you might be tempted to think about it otherwise.

Final Words

If you are ready for the adventure why not Signing up with Hubpages now and start making money from your short stories traffic. Hubpages is a wonderful community where you can get honest feedback on how to improve your writing and earning.