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I Had to Stop Doing 5 Things Before I Made Money Writing
You probably need to stop doing them, too.
I’ve been writing — and getting paid for it — for over a decade.
But I didn’t start making serious money (what Joe Rogan might call “F*%k You” money) until I stopped doing five things. I suppose that kind of money is relative, but I’ve made enough for a part or full-time income.
Without knowing it, 5 things were holding me back.
They might be holding you back, too.
#1) Ink in Overdrive
You know it when you see it.
On one extreme, a writer writes only out of passion. They love writing and they write whatever they want, whenever they want. They call themselves artists, purists, untethered to reward, unbothered by an empty bank account.
Nothing is wrong with this extreme — unless you want to make money.
Disclaimer: Some lucky writers hit the jackpot where their passion overlaps with market demand (what a money-paying audience wants and is willing to pay for). But that is rare, in my experience.
The other extreme is just as destructive to your money-making dreams.
At this extreme, the writer writes only for money. Money guides every decision. Every metric is scrutinized. Every letter and punctuation is optimized to make as much money as possible.
Getting paid for your art is one thing. Enslaving yourself to money is another.
At this extreme, your writing suffers from a lack of substance, emotion, and heart. Your readers feel it. Something is missing, and that something is your soul.
The Fix: As simple as it sounds, you must write for both love of the art and to make a buck. You must balance your motivations to the point where art and market demand meet.
You do that by finding something you want to write about that other people want to read.
Specifically, you:
- Identify a topic you want to write about within a topic with market demand.
- Then you study what works with that topic (titles, images, content, layout, etc).
