In February of this year, I came across a post on LinkedIn that mentioned a platform called “Koala Quill.” The poster said specifically that it was helpful for writers with “ADHD-brain.” As one of those writers, I decided I should do some research to see if the platform was legitimate and if, as the post claimed, I could earn any money writing and build a habit. Spoiler: I did. And I’ve been loving Koala Quill since, although there is some room for improvement and some features that seem unnecessary, which I’ll talk about later.

Before Koala Quill

First, I should give some background. I had already tried a number of other productivity options for writers. I used 4theWords and Trackbear and participated in NaNoWriMo. While I would sometimes have days in which I could write 10k words or more, the hardest thing for me has been writing consistently every day. Or rather, writing fiction every day, since I have to write every day for my job as a tech content writer anyway.

I would regularly go a full week without writing only to write a ton in a single day. So for the sake of consistency, I figured it was time to put my money on the line. The idea of Koala Quill being a place where I could bet against myself to write for a certain number of minutes, not just a certain number of words, was particularly appealing.

Doing my research

Because I’m a cynic who has seen one too many scams in my time writing for cybersecurity companies, I was a little suspicious. The website didn’t look super advanced, and it seemed to be run by mainly one person. I tried looking it up elsewhere and couldn’t find much, just a reddit post from the creator and a couple Medium articles from people who tried it themselves.

The trouble was that none of those people had actually requested a payout, so I couldn’t find anything saying whether or not this site actually pays writers for their time. And because of my tendency to give my financial info to as few sites as possible, I wasn’t willing to purchase a subscription right away. Still, the site was reasonably easy to navigate and well-maintained, and it didn’t seem to be a scam.

Fortunately, the site gives you a week-long subscription for free. So I decided to try it out.

Getting started with Koala Quill

Upon signing up, I got the week-long subscription to the highest tier, called “Visionary.” This tier allows you to earn $1 per day for 15 minutes of writing. Note, this is not $1 for 15 minutes on the site or staring at a page, but 15 minutes of actual active typing. This gave me an opportunity to explore the main features of the site, including:

1. Guilds

Guilds in Koala Quill are a way to bet money against yourself to write a certain amount of time over a certain number of days. For example, Koala Quill gives a $3 starting guild credit. This meant I could bet $3 against myself in a “starter guild” to write 30 minutes over the course of three days.

In other guilds, if you fail to meet your goal, the money is redistributed among those who did earn their goals, with a small amount also going to support the site and its creator. In the starter guild, however, the most you can hope for is to earn back the $3 credit. Note that if no one in the guild fails to meet their goals, then no one gets any extra money. So you could spend extra time with no money back.

You can also set up guilds of your own for other people to join in.

2. Quillmate sessions

Quillmate sessions allow users to earn extra minutes towards guilds. So if you have a guild goal of 60 minutes over the course of four days, you can head over to the guild page to search for a quillmate. You can choose to have a session of any length. The session will end when your combined minutes of active typing reach the length you’ve input. That means that your quillmate can type for 7 active minutes while you type for 13, or if you have a slow day you can type for five minutes and your quillmate could type for 15.

Once you’ve finished the session, your minutes will be applied to your guild. It can be a useful way to catch up if you fall behind. You can also chat a little bit with your quillmates, and you can follow other users to get notified when they’re available for a session.

3. Writing streaks

Each day you show up and write a little bit on the site, you add to your streak. You also get a heart that will be used to save your streak if you miss a day. It seems you can get up to 13 hearts, so you could miss 13 days in a row without losing your streak.

4. Monetization

You can monetize quills with ads if there are over 20 minutes of active typing on the draft. It looks like you earn $0.25 for every ad displayed, which is a pretty decent rate, but it hasn’t gotten much for me yet as I don’t have many views.

5. Scouts/gold star system

Scouts are readers who find other quills and give them a gold star. Each time someone clicks a quill you recommend and reads it, you get paid $0.05. Until there are more readers, this won’t be very lucrative.

6. Karma system

There is a system in place to allow writers to ask for feedback if they have a certain amount of karma, which they get by giving feedback on other quills. While you can quote parts of other quills in your feedback, there’s not a way to do inline feedback yet.

7. Koala coins

Most recently, writers can now receive and spend Koala coins and use these instead of actual money. I guess it gives people a chance to have less risk associated with their accounts, but it doesn’t seem like you can actually use that currency to buy anything. So it acts more like points than an actual currency at the moment. This may change in the future.

What I’d like to see

Koala Quill is pretty good. But there are a few things that, while they definitely aren’t enough to make me hesitate to recommend the site, can probably be improved.

Starting with:

1. A lack of community

It sounds strange, because Koala Quill is a decent community already. People join Quillmate sessions to share writing time, you can read and comment on others’ works, and so on. But unless you’re actively in a Quillmate Session with another writer, there’s no way to chat with them in real time. And even during a Quillmate Session, the window to actually chat is very small.

What I would love to see is a subreddit dedicated to Koala Quill. r/koalaquill is one I would join today if it existed. That way, it would be easier to talk about the site, to offer advice for others, and so on. And in my opinion it would also help give it a bit more legitimacy because it would be obvious that there are real users enjoying the platform. So people would quit thinking it might be a scam. People could share about their writing streaks and habits, and so on.

2. The site feels like it’s trying to do too much

This is hard to admit, because I really want a site where it’s easy to find readers, but I don’t think Koala Quill will ever be able to fill that void. It’s fantastic for building habits and motivating writers, but I’ve posted pretty consistently, both with chapters of a fantasy novel and articles offering advice for other writers. I’m lucky if I get two readers per article.

This is in spite of monetary incentives for reading and then recommending other quills. I can’t tell if it’s just because the site is still pretty small and we just need to get busy recommending it to more people or because it’s primarily attracting people who just want to write and don’t care to read and offer feedback. I wish I had more suggestions for how to fix any of this. But I have a hard time believing that can significantly change in the near future.

It’s also true that when it comes to the karma system for offering feedback, there are multiple other sites that (no offense at all intended) do it better. Think Scribophile and Critique Circle. They have a significantly higher number of readers and therefore a much better chance of actually having someone offer feedback. I have asked several times but only gotten feedback once or twice.

3. Needs more room for growth

Based on some server issues that the site has had in the recent past and some other minor problems, it seems to me that the current owner is managing it pretty much solo. I hope that Philip can build a team to help the site grow smoothly. He’s been doing a great job so far, but if we do manage to bring more people in (which is definitely the goal), there will need to be more involvement from others as well.

4. More equitable quillmate sessions

So far, it’s been somewhat useful to see a star rating for quillmates. But I still find myself writing way more than others (87 percent). Sometimes, I ask for a quillmate and I see a familiar name of a very slow writer. I will then have to either end the quillmate session and block them to keep it from happening again or just plan to type for 18 minutes while they type for 2-3 (yes, that has happened to me multiple times). This has been really frustrating to me. It seems like almost no writers view that time as a “sprint,” but instead as a time to just earn a couple more minutes where possible without any consideration of contributing themselves. I don’t always want to block them outright, because I still hope I can read some of their work or hope they’ll read some of mine.

Admittedly, I write pretty fast, so I understand that problem. But there are a couple things I’d like to see. First, I’d like to see a popup as soon as someone accepts a Quillmate session that allows me to reject it then and there and prevents them from trying again for either a certain amount of time or indefinitely. Alternatively or additionally, I’d like an option to block other writers only from quillmate sessions, so I can still follow their work and they can follow mine.

5. Spellcheck

I like writing in Koala Quill, but I always have to take an extra step to copy and paste into another software for spell check. It would be nice to have a native spell check function. It might be pretty hard to implement, though.

6. Making subscriptions easier

Several times when I tried to pay out of my earnings for the next month, I ran into difficulty and had to ask Philip for help. However, he quickly resolved any issues, so it wasn’t a big problem. I would still like to be able to pay via PayPal. It doesn’t make sense to me that I can receive a payout to PayPal, but I have to enter my card info directly to get paid.

To be honest, I don’t have much more to say on this front. I think the site is doing really well, and again, I think the owner has done a fantastic job. Philip, if you’re reading this, thanks for all your hard work!

For other readers, if you think of anything additional to add or if you’re a new user with questions, let me know or refer to Philip’s FAQ page. The FAQ below is more for new users who are on the fence about using Koala Quill long-term and want to know if it’s worthwhile.

FAQ:

1. Do you have to spend money to use Koala Quill?

No. Besides the Koala coins, you can also use the starter guild winnings and the initial $7 from the free trial week to pay from your balance for the second subscription tier for $10. It will only allow you to earn $12 per month, so you will either have to wait five months to pay for the highest subscription tier out of your balance, or strategically use guilds to earn enough money. I got pretty lucky with one of the early guilds and soon earned enough money to pay for Visionary.

2. Does Koala Quill pay?

Yes. I just requested my first payout and got $20. You’re not going to earn much on the site, but with Visionary you can earn a minimum of $10 per month (after the subscription cost), and more if you use guilds strategically. You can also earn from readers, though I’ve only earned $0.50 through that.

3. Can you get readers on Koala Quill?

So far, my answer to this would be not really. If someone has had more success, please correct me.

4. Does Koala Quill help you keep writing?

Yes! Since starting in February, I’ve written 124k words on this site. And I have a 77-day streak. I’ve never been able to write this consistently before.

5. Should I recommend Koala Quill to other writers?

Again, yes! Despite some minor growing pains, Koala Quill is a fantastic way to motivate yourself to write. I’ve seen many writers all over Reddit and various forums talking about how they struggle to keep writing when their motivation is gone. This is a service that writers need, and I can’t wait to see what it becomes.

Final thoughts

Whether you’ve been with Koala Quill since day one or you’ve just found it, I hope that this community can continue to grow. And I hope I’ll get to read more of the amazing stories and articles you write. See you around!