3 Things I Work On to Earn [More] Money Writing Online After 3 Years of “Doing the Work”

I started in 2020. I’m still here in 2023.

Everything I write in this article relates to one word.

Focus.

The internet is noisy.

The platforms of your choice? Noisy.

Ask “experts” how to get better at writing? You will be drowned by their be everywhere, do everything, show up every day, noisy advice.

This is my first piece of advice.

Focus on our craft.

Next, tune out the noise.

1* I Say Focus Because You’ll Be Distracted by the Glitters of Our World

In finance, this is known as “Shining Object Syndrome”.

In brief, it means hot money chases after the item of attention for that day. Tulips, penny stocks, dogecoins, the list goes on. And the list never ends.

The SOS applies to the digital world, too.

And this is another long list.

• “Be a volunteer editor for my publication! You can see how we accept and reject your work!”
• “Engage, engage, engage! You must engage, or no one will engage in your work!”
• “You must build a discord channel to know what others are thinking about, now!”
• “Write 10 articles daily! Comment 50 times! Follow 100 people!”
• “Build a personal brand! Don’t just think! Talk it out! Scream it!”

I bet this sounds familiar.

And it is easy to get distracted from our cause. What is that? Writing. Yes, writing. That is what we are here for. And writing in and out of itself takes time.

When I first started writing online, it took me 90 minutes to,

• Finish a draft,
• Polish it,
• Review it,
• Send to publication.

That is 90 long minutes, pals and gals.

Today, I condensed it to 40 minutes by spitting the draft writing on Day 1 and then 10 minutes to prune my words on Day 2 before hitting the publish button.

It takes time to get here.

To get better with the act writing.

To get better with the peripheral activities necessary to support writing.

So yes, focus. Zone out. It is okay to engage in other good-to-have activities.

Just don’t make it your immediate priority.

2* First, You Spray and Pray. Next, You Shoot the Bull’s Eye.

Spray and pray is a common writing strategy.

It involves,

• Writing a lot,
• Writing a lot on a lot of genres,
• Writing a lot on a lot of genres and sending our work to a lot of publications.

This was my strategy for building an online writing portfolio.

I’ll be honest. I did not devise this strategy. I thought that was the way to go. I thought. After all, everyone has their work everywhere, right?

And the result of that strategy is…

Head bumps. Plenty of them.

I got rejections after rejections. Some editors are kind. They left me coaching notes.

Many ghost me. My work would be in the queue for days, rotting. And I was left cliffhanging, wondering if I should pull them out.

I eventually did.

And this process got me to the next stage.

It involved me studying work I have published and those that got rejected. In short, I re-read my words. Oh, God. They stink.

Here’s why.

• Articles on genres I don’t care about got published.
• Articles on genres that I’m obsessed with daily got rejected.

It’s a double-whammy.

And…

Guess what happened next?

I doubled down on genres I did not give a shoot about because they got published. I ignored those I wanted to write.

Did it work well for me?

If you are thinking about earning money — Hell yeah. I was amassing boats and boats of peanuts and pennies.

So, no. I pulled myself out of that peanut hole after a year.

I focused on writing what I [really] care about.

• Entrepreneurship.
• Retirement.
• Economics.
• Investing.
• Business.
• Finance.
• Money.

Now, I have target boards to fire my arrows.

Once I focus my attention on doing what I want to,

• I write more,
• I write faster,
• I extract ideas without deliberate effort,
• I earn more.

I’m happy.

3 * The Inspiration Fall Back

Never, ever, never, ever rely on your inspiration for online writing.

It’s good when we have it.

But there will be times we don’t.

That’s life. Inspiration for writing is hard to come by when we are stressed, wiped out, or have committed 13 hours at work.

Have stories to fall back on within the genres of your choice.

Without it, you revert to becoming another-one-of-those-self-improvement-junkies. Again. Just like your year 1 of writing.

This is what I do to build my bad day idea-logue. I reference my professional life. I work in consulting sales. I have tons of stories in my back pocket to fall back on.

Here’s some.

• Sales objections — What would I do when the client says no $$?
• Annoying clients — 3 ways to divorce my clients without telling them that they stink.
• Cheapskate clients — I hope you have a $0 salary because you’re asking me to work for free.

Man. I can write a book on these.

And this is what you should strive for.

A fallback idea-logue.

Because bad days are [really] common. Just like light is to day.

Days of unbelievable inspiration? These are rare.

The Close

Many experienced online writers scream, “Do the Work”!

But do what work? And what is that work allowing us to write better and earn more?

To me, to me, that work is writing per se.

Earning more from our writing requires communicating better, avoiding distractions, staying true to genres that call out to us, and being consistent.

When we have those — We have a system.

This system keeps us in check and focus.

When we finally know what we need to do and what it takes to get sh!t done,

• Our writing will improve.
• Our earnings will climb.

Really. That’s it.

It’s boring AF, I know.

But I say this.

Boring… gets the job done.

This is my epiphany after 3 years of writing online.

Like this story? Hit Subscribe!

Oh, oh, you can buy me a cup of black too! Thank you!