How my poem went viral (and sold for $500) on In Writing in a week

Tl;dr: I was able to take advantage of In Writing (a text/literary NFT marketplace) and their ‘trending’ algorithm to make my poem one of the front-page NFTs, which eventually led to it being bought, and resold for over $500 (with me getting 20% of the royalty fees!)

The proof that I own this piece of writing, and was able to sell it for 499 MATIC (~$480 USD at the time of writing)

For any writer starting out, it can be tough to get your work seen and appreciated. It takes a lot of dedication, time and effort to build up a following and make a name for yourself. I myself have been a freelance journalist, poet, and short-story writer for almost 5 years now, but it’s only seen limited success as a side hustle prior to the pandemic. However, three factors have lead to an optimistic shift in our fortunes:

• the rise of ‘viral’ platforms like Tik Tok, allowing for more ‘virality’ and exposure for artists of all spaces
• content creations popularity and viability to younger generations (such as myself), and content creators being seen as more than entertainers
• a boom in NFTs and digital collectibles (full disclaimer: I don’t know how much I believe in NFTs as a technology, but it’s definitely creating positive change in the lives of many artists and writers including myself so I’m tentatively okay with it.)

I’ve combined the uprising of these three elements and begun minting my poems as text NFTs on In Writing, a specialized text NFT marketplace for poem, short story, and book NFTs. They’re ‘public’ on a ‘blockchain’, and I’ve been sharing them with the world for months now. This week I was happy to find that a poem I wrote not only got over 20,000 views in a week, but also was bought for 499 MATIC (~$480 USD at the time of writing), of which I get 20% ($100) in secondary sales alone.

A screen grab of my poem, along with its view activity.

What is In Writing?

In Writing is a text NFT marketplace that allows lesser known (as well as more established, but I don’t have personal experience with that) writers to sell their work and get discovered. I minted my writing as an NFT on In Writing and within a week, I had over 20,000 views on my poem. In Writing is a great platform for unknown writers to get their work seen by a large audience.

The reason for the high number of views was due to the fact that the poem was published on In Writing, a website that is dedicated to showcasing new and up-and-coming talent and exposing their work to NFT and cryptocurrency investors. The site features a wide variety of text-based content, including articles, poems, and short stories. Thousands of people visit In Writing every day to find new text NFTs to invest in.

Another reason I chose In Writing as opposed to other text NFT platforms such as OpenSea or textarea was because In Writing already has an established audience of readers, writers, and buyers — as I mentioned earlier, thousands of users are browsing on the daily — and also because there are no exorbitant ‘startup’/onboarding fees or processes. OpenSea wanted over $100 USD in crypto just to open an account and list NFTs with them, whereas In Writing lets you experiment with a free NFT mint and with subsequent NFT mints costing less than $1 USD per (around 80 cents at the time of writing).

Finally, I liked In Writing because it seemed like they were really writer-oriented. Again, as opposed to OpenSea, where ‘creator fees’ are set by OpenSea and have been complained about as being not transparent and arbitrary, In Writing has a built in royalty fee in its core ‘smart contract’ (the code that powers the platform). That means that I made $100 when I sold the poem for 99 MATIC, but was able to make another $100 (20% of the total payment) when the poem was re-sold for 499 MATIC. The website says that they’re doing this to ‘ensure sustainability within the text NFT ecosystem for writers and buyers’, and I can definitely see that trick keeping me sustained, haha.

There were also really great tutorials (e.g. see the ‘how to mint’ tab below) on how to mint on In Writing on the site itself, which I really appreciated since I’ve found entering the Web3 space to be relatively difficult. Personally, I was able to set up my Metamask wallet and mint using their free functionality in around 2 minutes, for reference.

In Writing’s ‘writing’ page, with the ‘how to mint’ tab as well as the ‘free mint’ promotion.

It’s not just me who has found great success on the platform — I’m constantly seeing poems and quotes being sold for hundreds of dollars, and I’m excited to see that Web3 for writers is finally catching up to the boom that artists got to experience in 2021. My one caveat is that I’m also seeing pieces not be sold, so it’s not entirely similar to the art NFT boom where it seemed like every collection, no matter the quality, was getting bought at exorbitant prices.

As an unknown writer, getting 20,000 views on my first poem in a week was an incredible feeling. I was ecstatic and motivated to keep writing. I believe that if you put your heart into your work and share it with the world, you will be rewarded. My poem got tens of thousands of views within a week, and I am so grateful to everyone who took the time to read it. I was skeptical about NFTs before this, but after trying them out, I do genuinely believe NFTs and digital assets have the potential to be the future of not only collectibles, but also marketing, communication, and publishing.