Creating a 6-Figure Writing Empire from a Student Apartment

Steal a few ideas for your dream

Writers are supposed to be dead broke, according to history.

But the job of content creation is becoming one of the highest-paid industries.

I started out as a writer six years ago and thought I was a joke. I nearly hid behind a nickname because I didn’t want the high school bullies to track me down again and throw comments at me (they still found me and did exactly that).

The one thought I’ve always had about making money online is this: “You’re too much of a wimp to inspire people. Who the heck is going to listen to a skinny dude from Australia who writes about all his failures?”

It turns out there is a market for everything — including failures, deadbeats, or misfits who have been left behind by society.

So I sit here in my student apartment, every day, and write. It’s all I know how to do. The act of writing never paid me for a large part of my career. I believe that’s the reason I started and kept going.

My advice: Create your own writing empire, if you dare.

Current and Future Ways I Make Money Online

I don’t wear earning money online as a badge of honor to impress people at cocktail parties.

To me, making a living online equals freedom. That’s it.

When you control your destiny your life feels different. You can tell your pain-in-the-ass boss that you’ve had enough, or stay at your 9–5 job and smile. I attend my 9–5 job four days a week with a smile.

Some days are good; some days are a nightmare. None of it really bothers me though, because I am free.

I work a job for fun, not to survive. That’s the power of building your own writing empire.

These are the dead-simple ways I earn a living online:

• Writing royalties from published blog posts
• Businesses who pay me to write for them
• eBooks (a hugely underrated income stream by many)
• Coaching/consulting
• Coming soon: online courses

I’m not going to put dollar figures beside each income source because it doesn’t matter. The sky is the limit. Whether you make six-figures, seven-figures, or $100 a month — it doesn’t determine your success. You determine if you’re successful.

You’ll also notice “coming soon” with online courses. I tried to launch an online course last year and it flopped. It’s worth noting that each way you can earn money may not work out the first time you try it. I’ve tried affiliate links, too, earlier in my writing career and never mastered this avenue either.

What matters is that you keep revisiting ways to earn a living online and trying different approaches.

God, I wish I was good at making money online. Thankfully I’m stupid and just keep giving it a go. You can do the same.

The Confusing Label of “WRITER”

A radical shift in my thinking was when my old boss said to me: “You’re a teacher, not a writer.” This subtle reframe changed everything. I realized my e-book was education; my website was education; my social media channels were education; my online course was education.

The awesome part is that the education system is broken.

Kids are paying six figures for a worthless degree from teachers who don’t know anything about life or business.

So now is the perfect time to get into online education through writing, creating videos, recording audio, or taking pictures.

The labels you use can change the trajectory of your life.

Choose Simple Tech

Technology can slow down the growth of your writing empire.

While trying to build an online course, I got lost with different learning platforms. Tech-savvy folks in hoodies, sitting at their laptops, were trying to get me to go with a custom build and to create my own learning platform.

I wanted to go with the overpriced platform “Teachable.”

Why? It’s simple. And I know people who already use it, so they can help me if I step on a landmine and encounter problems while trying to launch my course.

Simple is the best money-making strategy there is.

When the technology you choose is simple, you fall in love with the process.

When your process requires tech support and a 100-page FAQ to get started each morning, you’re going to move slow. Slow movers tend to die early on in the making money online movement.

If the tech is simple, choose it.

Stop Worrying About Small Costs

One of my buddies builds websites for a living. I rang him to ask about learning platforms and payment gateways/merchant accounts. I told him I could be paying up to 5% with PayPal.

He laughed at me.

When he was helping to build the online learning platform Mind Valley, he told me they were spending up to 10% per month on payment fees. Only later on when they started doing millions of dollars per month in revenue did they bother to optimize for cost by hiring a real CFO to play bank tennis.

I felt stupid. Once you validate your idea and get your process rock solid, then you can worry about small costs.

Optimize for cost later.

Forget Doing It All Yourself

I’m a control freak in sheep’s clothing.

Giving up control of my writing dream is something I struggle with. I have tried for six years to do everything myself and it never ends well. I end up feeling burned out and wanting to vomit from how many tasks are sitting on my Trello board.

It was only until a friend said to me “you need a business partner” that everything changed. I went on the hunt to find people to collaborate with. Most people were terrible. They would be committed for about three days and then lose interest or be distracted by life.

I had to find someone who understood my view of the world. And I did. The key thing they had was the opposite set of skills. I can write, publish, pitch, and look stupid. He can write best-selling books on Amazon, A/B test literally anything, do research, look smarter than me, create landing pages and outsource work to other smart people.

This partnership has allowed me to drastically increase my output and focus my energy on tasks I enjoy doing — like writing — rather than staring at a spreadsheet and wishing I paid attention in math class.

When you collaborate, you can make twice the money.

What Makes Your Writing an Empire?

Automation.

Automation is the key to making money online. All the successful writers and entrepreneurs I know have mastered this skill.

To put it another way, they worship email funnels.

They have worked out how to automate most interactions with their audience, so they can be everywhere at once and dish out enormous value. They haven’t lost the personal touch, either. You can still email them and they will happily reply with a smile and a bucketload of empathy.

A Killer Schedule, Not a Plan

Business plans are for our grandparents.

A schedule is how you build an empire.

Because you can commit to a schedule, but you can’t commit to a plan. A plan changes because a crazy health crisis can come out of nowhere and force you into lockdown for the rest of the year. Or a deep recession can come from nowhere and take away the money your customers need to pay you.

My whole philosophy for making money online is to build a bulletproof schedule. Your schedule gives you the income. Your schedule forces you to do the work. Your schedule is an agreement with yourself to do the work that you’ll eventually get paid for.

Don’t Be a Dick

I was an asshole when I first started writing. I spoke down to strangers and made out I was better than them. Heal yourself from your demons. Invest your money in yourself. When you do, everything changes.

Your writing empire starts to look easier because you treat the people you have to do business with better. This week I dealt with the following people:

• Multiple editors of publications
• Readers who messaged me
• Fellow writers
• An education software provider
• My accountant
• My boss at my 9–5

Imagine if I acted like a dick. All these conversations would be hard to have.

Making money online is hard when every conversation turns into a fight because of your behavior. Solopreneurship is a lie. You’re always dealing with other people to earn a living online.

An Enormous Multiplier of Income

Many people think making money is about business knowledge or content creation or software tools or social media. It is… but what I have learned has been different.

The soft skills for making money matter more than anything else.

Soft skills like empathy and vulnerability.

These two hidden skills are how I’ve built a writing empire. They are the two skills I practice every day. I’m obsessed with these two skills. I do everything I can to get better at them. Why? Who you are as a person determines whether people will pay you.

If you’re an asshole who treats people badly then you’ll earn zero.

If you hide behind research and facts and never show yourself, then people won’t feel like they know you. Therefore, making them unlikely to pay you for what you can teach them.

The Short Guide to Build a Writing Empire

• Write every day.
• Write in a place where there are people.
• Treat everybody you meet ridiculously well.
• Ask yourself “what problems exist?” and then solve them with your writing.
• Inspire people.
• Show people who you are, not the edited version.
• Find one way to make money as a writer and then become obsessed with it. Wake up every single day and focus on mastering that income stream.
• Let your heart bleed — and lead you to money. Write through a breakup. Write on the day of your loved ones’ funeral. Write when you lose your job. Write when you feel like shit. Write as an escape. Write to empty your mind. Write when you don’t believe in yourself. Most of all, write to be helpful.

That’s How to Build a Writing Empire

Take these practical ideas. Use them. Steal them.

Even if you don’t build a writing empire, I can promise you that when you write for other people, you will find a little bit of yourself. And when you find yourself you will become addicted to writing for the rest of your life.

Writers are not bums. Writers are the money-making future of the global economy.

Content creation as a business is bigger than when software ate the world.