How Much Money Can You Make Writing?

I’ve asked before how much money can you make publishing a book, and I’m going to revisit this idea in this post.  Writers want to make money, and that is the law of the land, or so it seems.

The real question is how much money can you make writing?

The answer is simple: without any effort not a lot.  Some might argue that they make a lot of effort to sell their books, or to promote themselves, and they might, but they are wrong. Money doesn’t often come because you’ve had a great week of writing blog posts, or have a couple of videos up or had a run of great social media.  It helps, it might give you a dollar or so, but not much, and that’s not making money writing.

The same is true with publishing, but I’ll share a personal view on how much you can make writing, and how much effort it will take.

The biggest thing is do not assume it’s easy.  I would go as far as to never say the words “it looks easy” or this is going to be simple, because it usually isn’t if you don’t know it.  Making money is about knowing how much you are going to potentially earn each time you do something.  If I have a book published and I sell it for $10 and get $2 in profits back, I’ll have to sell a lot of books to say I’ve become successful.  I’d have to plan and work hard to make this a part time job.

You’re probably thinking sure, that’s sounds ‘easy’ but I never said it was.  I said there would be a lot of effort.  I’ve seen that if I promote my own book on a regular basis on Twitter or Facebook, I might get an average of three or four ebooks sold each week, and they are 99 cents, which is the same as many authors who are out there.  This being the case it is hard to make money with this sort of writing without a lot of effort and time on the part of the writer in question.

I’ve got a blog, in fact I have two main blogs and my writing partners on Living a Life of Writing work on their other blogs.  They all take time and effort and a lot of energy and they have affiliate programs on them and this has helped with some extra coffee money.  While I could do more with SEO, and learning Search Engine Optimization, the fact remains it is complex and ever changing.  I have a lot to learn to make consistent money with this part of my writing. Writing a blog post is simple.  I write anywhere from 500- 700 words, and add a couple of images and a links between my posts, which is the standard for blog posts.  Even with this, it’s a challenge to create income.

I’ve also got, in conjunction with my writing partner Annabella March, a YouTube channel, Living a Life.  There we do book reviews, gaming tutorials, cooking tutorials, and we talk about writing.  If you take a quick glance through the information about YouTube, you can earn a good deal of income with this.  The only problem is that it is a different medium to work with and can take a lot of time away from your writing.  You as a writer need to earn money from writing and not from videos.  I am not suggesting do not use them to create valuable content, but rather look for a balance.

I also don’t recommend looking to the “average” of anything.  Some people will say you can earn X dollars with each number of page views on your blogs or other sites, but the truth is that you might get 10,000 readers on your blog, or a few people buying a product or two from your stores, but this is what makes you money with your writing, constant effort.  It takes about two hours to write a post and research it, and another bit to market it.  If you earn one dollar does that help you?

What makes you money with your writing is constant effort.  If you only post on your main blog site once a month, you will earn something, but it’s not worth commenting about.  If you simply dream of the numbers and don’t work hard, you won’t have the chance to make an impact you need to become a influential writer, and one who makes the money they need to stop working outside the home.

The next step is planning how much money it will take to consider yourself a successful writer.