Being a broke writer is completely unnecessary.
Makes me sad when I see it. Some people will hate me for saying that because I’ve made 7-figures from writing online and taught 6000+ writers.
When someone succeeds in making money from writing there are two reactions:
- Get mad at them. Write a nasty comment. Hate on “making money online.” Be skeptical. Claim it doesn’t work for you.
- Pay attention to how they did it and steal their tactics.
The second category makes all the money. The first category stay broke, and go and publish another book that sells less than $1000 of copies.
Making money from writing is purely a psychological game. No qualifications, expert status, or PhD can teach it to you.
Here are the psychological problems most writers face.
Fear of writing clickbait
This is a new fear, especially on this platform.
Extremists use labels like clickbait and misinformation to discredit a writer’s right to free speech.
There’s no such thing as clickbait. Read that ten times.
The promise of a writer’s content is subjective. Some readers will feel they got cheated, others will feel they got exactly what they came for. You can’t engineer either outcome.
You’re likely *not* trying to manipulate people with your headline or start World War 3. Say what you think. State the big benefit of what you just wrote in the headline.
Be bold. Don’t water your writing down for anyone.
If you fail to ethically grab attention with your writing, you’ll never build an email list and make any money as a writer.
That’ll leave you needy, desperate and begging readers for money with buy-me-a-coffee-please and Ko-Fi links that’ll never make you any real money.
Fear of being too salesy
Sales is just helping people.
If your non-fiction writing isn’t helpful, it’ll never make money. No one wants to read journal entries or stumble across more things to read that’ll take more time away from their busy lives.
Add value or go broke. Read that again.
The writing world is the same as the real world.
- You actually have to persuade readers to read your stuff.
- You have to persuade people to join your email list.
- And you have to persuade people to buy your products/services.
The real world is similar. You must persuade a university to accept you. You must persuade a boss to hire you. You must persuade investors to fund a business you want to start. You must persuade a partner to marry you and maybe have kids with you.
You can’t escape selling. Ever.
No one is coming to your writing to give you money. No one is coming to your always-open-website to give you the gift of a sale because “you earned it, pal” through your writing. This sucks but they’re the facts.
Thinking paid newsletters don’t work
Paid newsletters are a great opportunity.
Writers who struggle to earn a dollar often call them a scam. That’s because they go to their favorite platform and hope they can just “build-it-and-they-will-come.”
A big skill of successful writers I’ve worked with is marketing. You have to find creative ways to use social media to SEND people to your newsletters. Even if you do that, if your idea for a newsletter sucks, then no one is paying to read it.
A newsletter is an offer — that’s a skill. A newsletter is also a product, so it needs a proper product launch and daily marketing.
My newsletter is a bestseller. It’s made me 6-figures. This is because I took the time to learn the micro skills of operating a newsletter, for which writing well isn’t even on the requirements list.
Getting frustrated far too easy
I met a writer. They had login issues with X. They threw a tantrum at me for telling them to consider writing there.
Easily frustrated people get nowhere in life. Writing online is hard mode, so is everything worth doing in life.
Some days will suck.
People will plagiarise your work. Someone will steal your content word for word. You might get sued. Your best writing client will leave. Your favorite writing platform will lose traction or implement stupid policies that scare readers/writers away. Nothing you can do.
Solution: expect the writing journey to be hard and it’ll feel easier.
Too worried about readers’ reactions
When you write something you’re proud of some morons will poo on your parade and throw jelly cakes at the guests.
Don’t waste your life trying to figure out how readers will react, because even if you were a fortune-teller and could know, there’s nothing you can do to change their actions.
Focus on what you can control.
Some of the best things I’ve ever written went viral thanks to the mixed reactions the post got. Without the haters I wouldn’t have had the extreme organic reach.
Haters help your writing go viral. If anything, thank them for it.
Trying to make money from the writing itself
The worst way to get paid as a writer is for the words.
The words you write are the gateway to a business — that’s where the real money is made. Handouts from platforms won’t last, and can be pulled at any moment as many writers have learned the hard way.
Not willing to think like a business
The average writer is also an employee.
Don’t worry, I was too. The problem is that the employee mindset is one of scarcity. It’s the safe path that encourages us to take no risks. When you take this mindset and apply it to writing, it leads a person to fail.
The typical employee has also been infected with the consumerism mindset of discounts, coupon codes, only investing money in opportunities with guarantees (there are none), and not investing in themselves.
This way of life fails badly online.
Writing online and making money from it is solopreneurship in disguise. Your writing doesn’t need to change, your thinking does.
Promoting links that make no money
Writers have the gift of linking to whatever they want in their writing.
Most waste this golden opportunity. They’ll link to 5 other articles they wrote, their website that doesn’t convert, or a sign up to a platform they don’t own.
The only link you should ever promote is your email list.
Applying old world thinking to the writing world
Old world — writing on website blogs, asking gatekeepers if they’ll publish your article, or playing the slow death game of writing a book no one reads.
The worst use of a writer’s time, who’s making less than $100K/year, is to write a book. With no audience there are no book sales. Period. And no book publisher is gonna give you an audience. Don’t be foolish.
Build the audience first, then do whatever you want.
You can make money as a writer when you think the way writers who make a full-time income from it do. Until you change your thinking your writing earnings won’t change, sorry to say.
How you think is everything in life.
