The Birth Of A New Beginning

For four years I have been playing around with having my own site. I designed six new sites on Wix and two on WordPress. However, I wasn’t happy with the results; it all got rather expensive. Over time I let the idea slip into the background. Then recently, that all changed.

Due to dramatic changes on Medium, I decided it was high time to give it one more try. Only this time, I sat back to think about what I really wanted and then tried to find a way to make it possible.

What I wanted was a site that had the ease of use of the Medium editor, along with the capability to monetize as you can on Substack. During hours of research, I came across the perfect answer, Ghost.org.

Ghost can provide you with a ready-made system which you can customize to suit your own desires and objectives. Better still, the editor on Ghost is wysiwyg and highly intuitive to use. It is identical to the editor on Medium, which eliminated having to learn to navigate my way around a new unfamiliar system. Then comes the kicker. It has onboard monetization capability, hooking up directly with Stripe, which will handle your subscriptions and process/pay out any money that comes in.

There was only one thing missing. I thought it would be really cool for the site to have multi-creator capability, allowing me to create a Medium or Substack mini-me. Unfortunately, that comes at a very high cost. You need at least $150,000 and a team of expert programmers to build the back end! I am an old age pensioner on half a UK pension, some $300 a month, living in one of the most expensive countries on the planet! The only reason I can survive let alone build a dollar internet site, is all down to one Sara Ratel.

Sara is the most amazing woman I have ever met in my entire life. Four years ago I fell seriously ill in the South of Spain and she bought me a one-way ticket to Japan and put me in a private hospital. Then when she was done saving my life she bought me a brand new AppleMac, a desk and chair, and told me, ok, do what you like whilst I’m out at work. I am happy to report that I made a full recovery thanks to the lovely Sara and set about creating a writer’s life.

Back to that multi-creator platform. One day I suddenly realised that although The Opus Connection is not by any measure multi-creator, I can at least create the appearance of it being so. All I had to do was invite some excellent writer friends, Like Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Britni Pepper, John Cunningham and Tom Walker, (there are more to come) to send me a story I could publish on Opus. Voila, I finally have what I wanted all along, as if by magic.

I am truly blessed to have such wonderful writing friends like Dr Yildiz, Britni, John and Tom. Although no payment has changed hands, I have asked them to provide a photo and a URL link at the end of their story, back to Medium. So this will hopefully have the benefit of enhancing their internet footprint and possibly have the effect of generating some much-needed traffic back to where they can make some extra pennies.

In particular, I must single out my Mentor, Dr Yildiz, who has proved to be a marvellous ally and sounding board. In private conversations, he has found time to encourage and support me in my endeavours both on and off the Medium platform.

All that is left for me to do, apart from feeding the beast with a constant supply of stories, is market the site. I have to say, that marketing has sometimes been my weak point. Not this time. I am signed up with various social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) and Quora, as well as writing on Substack and Vocal Media. And that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I am planning to do.

One idea I am implementing is the gift of one of my books (A Hard Day At The Office, How to Earn a Passive Income) to anybody who subscribes before the end of July. Thereafter, there will be more free books to annual subscribers every quarter.

All that is left to say is that I plan to monetize the site sometime soon, though it will only be for $5 a month/$50 a year, which is a couple of coffees a month. Now that is what I call a great deal.

To see what I am on about, please click on the following link and enjoy a look around and a good read. If you like what you see, please subscribe as you see fit.

the-opus-connection-com.ghost.io