In addition to an interactive audio, I also published this story on Medium and my blog site at our community blogs hosted by digitalmehmet ecosystem for free so that more writers can access and benefit from our innovative solutions.
Happy New Year, dear Creators, friendly Freelance Writers, esteemed Content Entrepreneurs, and potential Sponsors! Greetings from hot Down Under summer with a warm hug for those who are dealing with cold season 🔥
This is
, a retired healthcare professional now a volunteer editor, content curator of ILLUMINATION Integrated publications on Medium and Substack, and a proud sponsor and founding member of the Substack Mastery Boost initiative, aiming to help and empower freelance writers of this amazing community. Today I will share with you our recent innovative and empowering program which can help you take your writing business to the next level.Writing and freelancing can be a lonely job, and entrepreneurship can be stressful and soul-crushing, but it can be joyful in a supportive community. The biggest issue for creators and freelance writers is to market their content and find customers (readers) in the long term.
I carried the weight of this issue for over half a century, trapped in an isolated country and confined within the walls of my science labs—silencing the writer’s voice within me, a prisoner to my own unspoken words.😢My 75+ year-old shoulders carry a whole lot of pain, each ache telling its own story. I truly hope you never have to endure such crushing loneliness or repeat the horrible mistakes I made along the way.🙏
Purpose of this Important Story Today
I wrote this short story to introduce a creative solution designed and led by our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz, who is also my mentor and the person who invited me to this community as a reader for a year, helped me to become a writer/editor/content curator, and even made me a pub owner which I had no clue about before joining here. So, I am grateful for his mentorship, and I pay back with my volunteer work for the community he built with his stunning leadership skills.
In March 2020, Dr Yildiz founded ILLUMINATION publications on Medium with a clear mission and vision: to help writers find their voices and share their stories without barriers, delight their readers, and build their audiences with community support. It has been almost 5 years.
Driven by a volunteer workforce, the ILLUMINATION team provided free services to all community members, still do, and will continue to do so on Medium and Substack. Writers worldwide found a platform and a great community to share their stories, connect with others easily, build their audiences, enhance their writing skills, and increase their income.
As the community grew rapidly, so did the operational demands. For instance, moderation, administration, and marketing of stories by contributors became too large a task for volunteers alone. They got exhausted. As a volunteer editor, due to the excessive publishing work of 35,000 writers, sometimes I work more than 8 hours daily, which is like a full-time unpaid job.
Then, in 2024, with the vision of Dr Yildiz, we expanded our services to Substack, integrating it with Medium and even with Patreon to give more options to our writers for growing their audiences, building expertise, enlarging their networks, and increasing their potential income.
To sustain and expand our impact, we needed a creative solution. That’s when we decided to create a small membership initiative for those who can afford to fund and support those who cannot more effectively. It is called the Substack Mastery Boost program. But it goes beyond Substack. It is just a temporary name.
When Dr. Yildiz introduced this program last year and shared the draft with me, I teased him by saying, ‘You’re acting like Edward Ned Kelly, our Aussie hero, taking from the wealthy to give to the poor.’ We had a good laugh about his altruistic and innovative approach.
We are now testing the creative solution on a small scale on Substack (as it is the most creator-friendly platform) under the initiative Substack Mastery Boost Pilot, which started in November 2024, will continue until December 2025, and it will be a global service offering for education and marketing services of freelancer and content entrepreneurs after January 2026.
The good news is that now we have a prototype that has passed the beta phase and is piloted for scalability.
I am pleased that 139 founding members joined the pilot boost program. We will test the features we offer for 12 months. When it is successful by December 2025, we will scale it globally as a low-cost education and marketing support service for freelancers and entrepreneurs.
The Purpose of the Membership Tiers
This membership branch provides financial stability and ensures the longevity of ILLUMINATION’s mission. It might generate a steady income stream for administrators and marketers of the program, reducing reliance on unpredictable donations.
This stability might enable long-term planning, innovation, and timely responses to new opportunities for our freelance writers.
With this approach, we’ve built a system where funds from paying members will empower non-paying creators and support their growth to be freelance writers if they choose that path. In the end, it will be a win-win position for all parties involved in our publishing process.
Summary of Our 3-Tiered Membership System Features
We offer customized services based on the needs of creators, freelancers, and entrepreneurs.
As the graph below shows, we keep 70% of our services for free members. Any income coming from 25% will also go back to the support of 70% while supporting the freelancers, so it is not a profit organization but an empowerment one for all levels of writers.
Here is a diagram showing the breakdown at a high level for you to conceptual the current offering during the pilot phase. It might change next year when it becomes production as more creators might consider to be freelancers. We don’t have enough data about it yet.
Please note that the following details are draft, and more services will be added soon. I will update you.
Tier 1: Free Membership for Creators ($0 Monthly)
This free service is provided by the new Friends of ILLUMINATION Support as reported in a story before:
Be a Friend of ILLUMINATION
Find Your Voice, Curate Inspiring Stories, and Build Your Audience with Support from a Thriving Community Leveraging…medium.com
Designed for writers who write for personal satisfaction, this tier offers:
Submit one story per week to any of our Medium publications. We have 15 publications
Submit 1 story per month featured in the Magnetic Newsletter Pro publication on Medium.
Submit 2 stories per month to Curated Newsletters on Medium.
Submit 3 blog posts per month for free on the digitalmehmet.com site
We will offer a complimentary link to the community database on Medium, Substack, and the DigitalMehmet website if you are interested.
Free access to our Slack workspace.
1 YouTube video submission to ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery channel per month
Be part of the optional Friends of ILLUMINATION initiative
Tier 2: Freelancers’ Subscription ($5 Monthly)
Designed for writers who aim to generate income from their content on multiple platforms, and it includes all benefits from the Free tier, plus:
Priority publishing across all our Medium publications, guaranteed within 48 hours.
30 blog posts monthly on your blog account hosted on the DigitalMehmet website.
Free inclusion of all your Substack newsletters in our partner database, which will be publicly accessible.
Free promotion of your Substack newsletters in curated collections published on Medium, Substack, Quora, LinkedIn, and the DigitalMehmet website.
3 monthly social media shares of our newsletters across LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, and X (Twitter).
1 monthly link placement in 3 newsletters on Substack (ILLUMINATION Library, Substack Mastery, and Content Strategy newsletters with over 100K subscribers).
Unlimited YouTube video submission to ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery channel per month
Full membership to Illumination Priority Club on Slack workspace led by Dr Mehmet Yildiz.
All benefits of the Substack BOOST program pilot and later production product.
Tier 3: Founding Member Subscription for Entrepreneurs ($15 Monthly)
Designed for content entrepreneurs aiming to scale their business using the services of other freelancers, and it includes all benefits from Free and Freelancer tiers, plus:
Unlimited blog posts on DigitalMehmet per month, boosted by WordPress Blaze.
A monthly featured editorial introduction to your newsletters will be posted across all our platforms and social media channels.
Newsletter posts to Substack Notes, managed by our six moderators from different accounts.
A monthly special newsletter providing practical tips for audience growth and essential tools for successful content marketing.
A featured blog of your newsletter posted by Dr. Yildiz, boosted by WordPress Blaze.
1 Formal Feature on ILLUMINATION and 1 on Curated Newsletter publications per month (It is possible to use these 2 credits in our other 14 publications) — This is a new feature on Medium, and the story must meet distribution guidelines. See our six rules.
A free PDF copy of the Substack Mastery book and its updates
Unlimited YouTube video submission to ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery channel per month
In addition, productized BOOST facilities will be provided for Substack after the pilot is completed without extra cost.
I don’t have enough info about the sponsors as only a few companies showed interest in supporting the pilot, and formal engagement is still being discussed for the production phase.
Why This System and Service Matters
This system service will create empowerment for creators, freelancers, and content entrepreneurs. Revenue from freelancers and entrepreneurs will directly/indirectly support free services for creators, ensuring accessibility for everyone.
Financial independence will allow our creative team to delegate operational tasks to professionals like digital marketers or virtual assistants so creators can focus on writing.
It also will enable us to innovate new solutions, become more creative, expand our services, and respond quickly to community needs.
How to Join ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery Boost Pilot
Membership options are available through Substack by subscribing to one of the following 3 newsletters. You may subscribe to these publications to qualify for Level 2 or 3.
Content Strategy, Development, & Marketing Insights
Here is more information about the Boost pilot.
Here is the application page.
Our services during this beta testing phase will provide educational resources, promotional support like marketing newsletters, and privileged content curation and publishing, featuring across multiple platforms like Medium, Substack, DigitalMehmet, LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, and others.
As we did on Medium, soon we will soon introduce a first of kind community publication on Substack. It is called the ILLUMINATION Writing Academy. We will provide details in our upcoming newsletter on Medium and Substack. Stay tuned for this unique service.
Let’s Build a Sustainable Future for Writers
ILLUMINATION publications have a big community and it is growing rapidly. Our small arm, which might generate some revenue, will ensure that creators, freelancers, and entrepreneurs have the tools, support, and opportunities to succeed.
I invite you to join us today and become part of a freelancing community that empowers writers to grow and thrive while building a sustainable future for the creative, supportive, and joyful community.
I am a founding member of the substack Boost Pilot, volunteer editor/curator of ILLUMINATION Publications, chief editor of Health and Science pub, and proud member of this wonderful community.
An remember to watch this stunning video presentation by our generous Aiden posted in the Content Marketing Strategy Insights publication for free today. It is designed to inspire you and empower for a sustainable writing business. As editorial team of ILLUMINATION, we do everything we could for you.
Thank you for reading my story.
If you are a new writer, please check out our updated submission guidelines before sending your first draft so that our editors can publish them quickly. Here are the links to guidelines:
ILLUMINATION, Curated Newsletters, SYNERGY (Newsletter Booster), Technology Hits, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, Readers Hope, and Magnetic Newsletter Pro.
I am a retired healthcare scientist in his mid-70s, and I have several grandkids who keep me going and inspire me to write on this platform. I am also the chief editor of the Health and Science publication on Medium.com. As a giveback activity, I volunteered as an editor for Illumination publications, supporting many new writers. I will be happy to read, publish, and promote your stories. You may connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Quora, where I share stories I read. You may subscribe to my account to get my stories in your inbox when I post. You can also find my distilled content on Subtack: Health Science Research By Dr Mike Broadly.
If you are interested in being a writer for my Health and Science publication on Medium, you can send your Medium ID via our writer registration portal here.
Lessons Learned from My Personal Stories
Thanks for subscribing to my Health Science Research By Dr Mike Broadly.
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