How Much Money Can You Earn From Your Writing in a Year?

How much money do writers earn?
How can I earn money as a writer?
How much money can I make as a writer?

These are questions that I get asked all the time.

And do you want to know the answer?

It all depends on one thing - YOU.

It depends on how well you write, what you write and how much you write.

So someone who writes useless blog posts once a month isn’t going to make as much  money as someone who writes in depth, weekly blog posts that get read by hundreds of thousands of followers.

But now is the best time to become the successful writer you’ve always wanted to be - as long as you’re prepared to work at it.

This is the time of year when everyone is thinking about plans for the New Year.

And you can do it too by making a 12 month writing plan and thinking about these 3 things:

How much can you realistically write in 12 months? You’ll be surprised just how much is possible. for instance, writing for just one or two hours a day is enough to write a 50,000 word book a month.

What will you write? do you want to write ebooks? Novels? Or do you want to be a blogger? A scriptwriter? A copywriter?

How much will you need to write to earn enough money? This is where it becomes a bit of a guessing game, but it is possible to come up with a winning strategy of how much money you need to earn plus how you’re going to do it (it’s math, people).

In the end we’re all different so you need to come up with your own writing plan.

But the advice I can give you is that you shouldn’t wait till next year.

Make your plan now and start writing.

Don’t wait till the New Year.

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Want to learn more about writing and earning money?

Read my latest article How Can One Year of Writing Be Too Much?

Don't Say Yes When You Want To Say No

We've all been there.

Someone asks you to do something you don't want to do, yet you agree to do it.

Or someone wants to do something but they need your permission (like one off your kids), so you say yes even though you want to say no.

So why do we do it?

It's usually to avoid bad feelings, friction, or conflict.

Yet the truth is that people won't like you more or give you more respect, if you say yes all the time instead of standing up for what you really want.

And at the same time, saying no is empowering. It won't make you popular, but it will help you to set boundaries of what you will and won't do.

Best of all, you only have to say no once, and it's easy to do it every time after that.

But...you may be wondering what this has to do with writing?

Saying no to things you don't want to do opens up more time for the things you DO want to do and for the things that are important to you.

And that means more time for writing.

Sure your friends will be annoyed with you if you tell them you don't want to go out drinking with them because you want to stay home and work on your novel instead, but who's life is it?

And if anyone pressures you for an immediate answer to something, but you don't want to say yes, or you're unsure, just say "I'll have to think about it." And if they still pressure you tell them "If you want an answer right now, it will have to be no. But if you give me time, I'll think about it." (This works amazingly well with teenagers in the family.) :)

Don't let time-vampires steal any more of your time.

If you'd rather be writing, go and do that and say no to the unimportant things or stuff you'd really rather not do at all.

And if you want more inspiration read the short viral article written by Derek Sivers, "No “yes.” Either “HELL YEAH!” or “no.”

Then get back to writing.

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Discover the writing resources I've used to help me  make more money from writing in my latest article for writers, "My Top Ten Writing Resources."

Writing Forums. Helpful or Not?

Lately I’ve been taking somewhat of an interest in writing forums.

Why?

Because they’re regularly touted as one of the best places for writers to hang out and learn their craft.

Many years ago, while I was quite new to being a writer (but I was already earning a decent income from it), I joined a couple of writing forums.

What I found was that most of the people on these forums weren’t writers at all.

Most were wannabes who had never (and probably never would) write anything publishable at all.

Quite a few others were just trolls.

It only took me a few weeks to realise what was going on and get the hell out of there.

But lately I wondered if anything had changed.

So I took a look around and scanned through a few forums looking at the threads and all the responses.

And you know what?

Nothing had changed.

No matter where I looked, each forum was dominated by people either responding to questions with useless advice because they weren’t professional writers and so had no clue what they were talking about, or they were nasty trolls just hanging around trying to upset people.

But do you know what amazed me the most?

It was how much time these people were spending on these forums.

It seemed that they spent hours every day posting new topics, answering questions, and getting into arguments.

There were even people who seemed to be on the forums 24/7 and had tens of thousands of posts and comments and thousands of followers.

One poster actually had well over 67,000 posts that he’d uploaded over his 10 year membership which averaged out at over 18 posts a day. Imagine that! Posting 18 times a day - or more -  to the same forum for 10 years.

And the funny thing about all this was that the threads that received the most responses were the ones where people were asking about how to earn money from writing.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I found this hilarious because how can anyone who spends most of their time on free forums dishing out advice about how to make money from writing, actually have the time to make money from writing?

The irony just has me in stitches because let’s face it, anyone making money from writing is writing and getting their work published, not hanging around writing forums. Have you ever heard a successful writer saying how they spent hours and hours every day on writing forums and it helped get them to where they are today?

No doubt there will be some who think that writing forums are great and that’s why they’re always on them. But it’s also the reason why they’re not successful writers.

Successful writers are busy writing.

My advice to anyone who wants to earn money from their writing is to “Just Do It,” as the Nike slogan says.

Writing time is best spent writing and if you don’t know where to start or what to write next, try a writing course like Quick Cash Writing that gets you earning money from your writing  fast.

Or look at my Writing Markets page for new places for writing submissions.

Or how about downloading How to Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less so that you can get to work straight away writing your next best seller.

Writing is work, not a hobby.

No writing = no publishing = no money.

So don’t spend your time hanging out on forums all day.

Find a way to start work quickly and get down to some serious writing.

Just Do It.

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Find Inspiration From The Writing Practises Of Best Selling Author Roald Dahl In My Latest Article For Writers.

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