How Important Is Making Money From Writing?

Many purists will tell you that writing is an art form and so you should never be so vulgar to discuss money in the same sentence.

And to that I say, rubbish.

We all want to earn money from our writing and we want to earn enough so that we can quit the day job and write.

But how important should money be? Should you care more about earning money than about your writing?

No.

Writing and publishing should lead to money but wanting to earn money shouldn’t lead you to writing.

You should write because you love to write and not because you think it’s a fast and easy way to make money.

If you do that, your writing will never be good.

A perfect example of this is a writer I heard from who said she’d studied the market and discovered that the fastest selling ebooks were romance novels.

She wanted to write ebooks because, she said, they were a good source of passive income and so she could work once and go on earning money from her novels for years.

Her goal was to write 30 novels. By her math it would provide her with over $10k/month income through ebook sales.

To get the money faster she wrote her 30 novels in less than a year by writing each ebook in 10 days which is 3 a month and so she’d reach her income goal in a year.

The problem with the plan was that she was writing the books so fast and under so much self-inflicted pressure, that her novels were badly written, full of typos and the plots were trite and uninteresting.
The result is that 18 months later, her ebooks sales are still low.

I thought it would be a better plan to write one really good novel a month instead of 3 really bad ones.

But she wasn’t really a writer to start with. She just thought writing was a way to easy money.

There’s plenty of food for thought in that, isn’t there?

If you’re not a writer, and by that I mean someone who enjoys writing, then you’ll never make a lot of money as a writer.

Writing is a talent that some people have and many don’t.

Most experienced writers find it difficult to write under so much pressure which would make it impossible for a non-writer to do it.

But she tried.

And failed.

Just enjoy writing and keep doing it and eventually you’ll get faster naturally.

I know I did.

Just Write, Damn You!

OK, so this is going to be a mini-therapy session for me while I sit and whine to you about all the would-be writers (who like to call themselves aspiring writers) who never write a damn thing.

And then they ask me how to get started or how they can make money from their writing (that they never do).

So first I think I need to get one thing straight.

If you never write anything then you’re not a writer.

You see, you don’t need a college degree or any type of formal education to be a writer. And you can’t get a diploma or a certificate to show that you’re a writer the way doctors and lawyers do.

In fact, the only way that you can prove that you’re a writer is if you write every day.

And you don’t even have to write a lot. Many novelists only write for one or two hours day.

But the important thing is that they do it daily.

And what’s great about being a writer is that you’re no paid by the hour so your writing can go on earning money for years.

And it all begins with writing.

Every day!

So sit down and write, damn you.

Quick Cash Writing

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Struggling With My Writing Routine

This week I'm struggling with keeping up with my usual writing and publishing routine.

I'm quite the creature of habit (which I'll be talking about in a future article) and I like to get certain writing tasks completed on certain days. That way I never have think about it. I never suddenly have to think "Did I write that article for Writeaholics.net?" Nope. I just know it's been done because I have a set day to do it.

Anyway, this week my usual routine has been monumentally disrupted because...my computer has had to go into the repair shop so I don't have access to my usual files and my usual software.

I know that something is wrong with my computer because it's slowing down and having a few issues, but it is 4 years old and I usually replace my computer every 3 years, but my current Mac Book Pro has been such a great computer that I hate to part with it.

The problem began when I started having issues downloading some of my emails. I phoned my hosting company, Netregistry.com.au, and they discovered that some horrible person has created fake email accounts on my website and is trying to download them every time I try and download my legitimate emails.

The fake email accounts are attempting to download to several different IP addresses, none of which are mine.

Now you'd think, wouldn't you, or at least I would, that with such a hacking attempt going on with my account that my hosting company would do something about it immediately.

But no. It's now been several days - today is Wednesday and they discovered this hacking attempt last Thursday while I was on the phone with the so-called tech support department - and still not one damn thing has been done to put things right despite my making 3 phone calls and sending 2 emails to them.

And in the meantime I cannot download my emails for that particular website (my cheritonhousepublishing.com site) because every time I do, the hackers automatically try to download their emails too and all the IP addresses get immediately blocked from the account, including mine.

So then I can't access anything and I have to ring up NetRegistry.com.au and ask them to unblock my IP address so that I can at least log into my website control panel. But first of all they go through loads of rubbish asking me to send them screenshots of my failed login attempts, etc and I have to keep explaining that it's not a fault on my computer, it's their system automatically blocking me out. It usually takes me about 20 minutes to get them to understand this.

I-Yi-Yi!

In the meantime I wondered if all this is what is affecting my computer. Have the hackers got into it somehow? I'm not sure how online hacking works so I don't know what people have the capability to do.

The computer store rang me today and said that my computer hard drive is corrupt and had some adware on it. They've removed the adware and are cloning my files so that they can install a new hard drive and put all my clean files and software back onto the new hard drive. I should get it back today, at a hefty price, but it will be worth it.

I'm currently using my Mac Book Air which is the computer I use if I want to work away from home.

I do sometimes like to work in the park or at the library, or sometimes at a really nice lookout (that has toilets and a drinking fountain) that's not too far away from here. That's one of the good things about living in the mountains. The views are fantastic.

I don't keep anything on this computer just in case it gets damaged or stolen. I don't have my emails on it and I don't store personal or business files on it. Only files that don't matter if others see them.

And it's password protected which means that once the lid is closed, a password is required to use the computer again. I really use it as nothing more than a glorified Word Processor.

And it doesn't have any of my software on it or passwords to my internet accounts.

I like to stay safe. Yet still there is adware on my main computer which I'm usually really careful with too.

On the upside of all this, I've managed to get plenty of writing done because I don't have much else to do while my other computer is AWOL.

I can't do a lot with my writing because I can't upload anything without my passwords and I don't want to use them even once on this computer just in case it remembers them. I can however, log into this blog and make a new post. It's one place I am auto-logged into on this computer.

So I'll keep waiting till my Mac Book Pro returns and in the meantime I'll just keep writing and writing.

My usual routine may have been disrupted but at least I'm getting plenty done.

There really is no excuse not to write.

Write Faster And Better

If you’re like me you dream of being able to write more every day and have a huge library of published books and a slew of websites with hundreds of pages of useful articles and other information and millions of visitors a month.

Ahh… wouldn’t it be nice?

I’m not there yet but I am getting there.

How about you?

Do you dream of the same writing goals?

If so, what’s holding you back?

It’s probably the same thing that’s held me back too.

Practice.

That is the ‘secret’.

If you want to write more you need to write faster so that you can tackle more large writing projects such as books.

Writing faster means writing more and it also means writing better.

In other words, practice will help you write faster and improve the way you write at the same time.

If you want to write faster and write and publish more, do what I always do and get a course or an ebook that you can follow that will get you started and keep you writing.

Some courses I’ve used are:

Quick Cash Writing. Great for writing all kinds of smaller projects such as filler articles, short stories and greeting card verse.

http://writeaholics.net/links/quickcash.html

Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less. Laid out in an easy to follow style and suitable for writing fiction and non-fiction. Just follow the advice as you go through the course and by the end you’ll have your manuscript written.

http://writeaholics.net/links/writequickly.html

12 Month Writing Challenge. A course that gives you monthly assignments that build on top of each other so that by this time next year you’ll not only have earned over $30K from the course, but you’ll have multiple streams of passive income to keep you going.
http://12mthchallenge.com

7 Day Ebook Writing and Publishing System. If you want to write ebook fast, this course will get you there. Short how-to ebooks can help you to earn a steady, passive income. When you download this course, you’ll also receive the bonus ebook 2 Hour Short Report Writing: How to write a short report or ebook in just 2 hours. 

http://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/7day.html

Can you imagine how much writing you’d be able to do and how much money you’d earn if your downloaded and worked on writing courses such as these?

There are many more writing courses available to download online so there really is no excuse for not getting started today, even if you don’t have an idea of what you want to write.

All you need is a goal of what you want to achieve then get to work and do it.

Some people never get started with their writing because they’re afraid they’ll fail. While others are afraid they’ll succeed.

If you don’t make a determined start now, what will you achieve in one week’s time, in a month or in a year?

Nothing.

Ask yourself this:

• What is your goal with your writing?
• How are you going to achieve it?
• Why haven’t you started?

Now would be a great time to begin.