Website on Literature Niche: Will it be Profitable?

[Kane]

Currently, I am working on a website on literature niche. The website will publish poetry, stories and essays. Do you think a website on this niche will be profitable? I mean can I get traffic and revenue on a website in literature niche? I know people do not search for poetry and stories online, but what about social media, can I bring traffic through social media?

 

[Grant]

If you put a spin on it that is different than other sites similar to it. I think you could make it work, but what would be your unique feature to draw people in?

Are you letting people submit their own work to the site? Maybe it can be a site to critique and rate your poetry, essay or any other writing.

 

[linux.poet]

I've been working on this riddle for the past 3 years or so. I think an online literary journal can be profitable if you sell the journal, either by selling the print journal or the epub, pdf, etc files hidden behind paywalls. You need to be careful, however, to secure the files if you decide to go the file route to prevent theft, which you may not be willing to do, and print runs are a $13,000+ upfront expense.

Literary content suffers from the "circular effect" which means that your primary audience will be literary academics, i.e. college professors and students of literature who appreciate it. Basically, the only people who read literature are the people who write literature or teach it. And, if you study literature long enough, you'll realize that literature is political and geographic in nature, at least the ones that the college professors consider important. Therefore, making a literary journal of, say, "Southern Nepalese Literature" will get you more traction, or like "[Name of Journal]: Literature of Southern Nepal", etc.

Judging by my own experience, political poetry is by far the most profitable - I was reading a poetry offer of $70 for a political poem. Other types of poems are hard to publish for any money at all, so there you go. It's pretty safe to say that the more political your journal is, the more successful it will be financially, but the amount of controversy and insults you endure shall increase along with your profits, so politic wisely.

As for social media, basically you need to follow/like/retweet all of the other literary journals and college professors of literature on Twitter or whatever other platform you can find them on. Twitter is actually a good platform to be a literary journal on because you can blast submission announcements, submission closures, and when your journal is out, what events and readings and interviews you're hosting, etc. It's a good way to direct traffic. There are also poetry communities on Twitter/X these days too. Basically you need to network and hobnob with academia for this to work well, following things like the Modern Language Association. It's doable as long as you get your journal into the hands of the right people.

 

[Jason]

Anything is possible with the right traffic. In fact, a lot of people say literature is some degree that is useless, unless your teaching, but I wouldn't say that. It can be profitable just like philosophy and other mocked degrees. No offense to anyone, you know where I'm coming from.

 

[Kane]

If you put a spin on it that is different than other sites similar to it. I think you could make it work, but what would be your unique feature to draw people in?

Are you letting people submit their own work to the site? Maybe it can be a site to critique and rate your poetry, essay or any other writing.

My idea is to build user submitted site where people will publish literary works and earn based on the revenue share model. I am also thinking to offer editorial services and critique services for additional revenue. However, the question is if I can actually get clients.

 

[linux.poet]

My idea is to build user submitted site where people will publish literary works and earn based on the revenue share model. I am also thinking to offer editorial services and critique services for additional revenue. However, the question is if I can actually get clients.

I think it’s possible. Walk to the nearest college or university and put up flyers on the bulletin boards (or anywhere that it is legal to put up flyers) with your site name, value proposition, and URL.

You could also get permission from the college administration to hand out the flyers to students or do a pop-up booth during orientation with them near the English department building. That will get you some clients to submit writing to your website. Students need money. Many English majors are also looking for publishing credits.

This is U.S. advice though. If it doesn’t work where you live, you could still target American English major college students by searching them up on social media. Those are good clients for a service like what you are describing.

Anyway, I’ll be quiet now. But I’m pretty confident that you can get clients with this idea.

The problem though, is that many of said clients won’t buy your editorial service and view it as a scam, as well as the critique service. You’ll be competing with Critique Circle which offers that service for free, and is high quality to boot. Unless you are an actual editor with experience that you can sell, it’s not a good idea. For any sort of publication service, a good rule of thumb is to always monetize the readers instead of the writers. The writers are already providing value in the form of writing and labor in making said writing, so your job is to convert that information value into monetary value and skim off the top.

Freelance editing is a thing, but offering paid editorial service when you’re a publisher makes you look like a vanity press that is trying to rip off writers. It looks fishy.

 

[Jason]

I'm sure universities are full of English majors (what I was at one time) and others wanting to express themselves for many reasons. In that case, we see a huge reason it could be profitable.

 

[Kane]

I think it’s possible. Walk to the nearest college or university and put up flyers on the bulletin boards (or anywhere that it is legal to put up flyers) with your site name, value proposition, and URL.

That's a great idea. In our country, people are selling dissertation and term paper writing services, if I can get people, especially student of language and literature, to use my service, the literary website can be fruitful. But I think I will have to work really hard.