Making Money
The Best Way To Make You A Working Writer
Do you have a long-term business plan?
Most of us who write on Medium do it to make money. It may not be the most important reason for which we are here, but it most definitely plays a role.
I started writing on Medium because I saw it as a means of generating income doing what I enjoy, expressing myself with words.
I was blogging, on and off, for more than ten years. I am not very good at tech, and the growing trends in blogging software were making me more and more frustrated. Blogging without an audience was akin to journaling. I could and was doing that using good old notebooks and a pen; I didn’t need blogging for that.
Medium offered me a readymade audience for my writing without having to know much about technology, and they paid me to write. Even though the pay is not what I want it to be, I made $0.12 with my first story in less than a week with no followers. That was 12 cents more than I had made in ten years of blogging.
One of the first things I did when I started writing on Medium was to seek guidance from people who were making a full-time living on Medium, or claiming to be.
The best thing I came up with back then was a story by Shaunta Grimes, who encouraged new writers to dedicate at least two years to writing on Medium. She showed a roadmap, where if you were to start with practically nothing, but made a steady 10% weekly gain by writing consistently, you could be earning a four-figure income in a couple of years. I was sold on the idea.
Recently, I came across another story of hers where she puts things in perspective for you if you want to be what she calls a working writer.
One of the biggest complaints I read on Medium is from people who worked as writers in their previous lives. They were earning an output based or hourly income for writing, and now, they don’t make anything near what they were used to. There is a big difference between how an employee thinks and how an entrepreneur does.
The one writer that understands the entrepreneurial mindset and stays focused on the long-term is Itxy Lopez. I wish I were as wise as she is when I was 22 years old. But she knows what she wants, has a gameplan that she follows, and is generous enough to share it with others.
Another writer who understands the benefits of a long-term gameplan is René Junge. He used it to walk away from his corporate prison. The full-time writer is a publication he has started for those who want to earn a living from their writing.
He shares a wealth of information in one of his stories. It’s about how to earn a full-time income with your writing. While he seems to be making a pitch for his publication, he is, in reality, sharing a treasure trove of his work from his writings. Take a look.
The current circumstances are changing the way we will be living in the future. The economy is reshaping itself as we speak. More and more people realize that they don’t have to continue in the usual way.
Twelve years ago, I reinvented myself from an employee with entrepreneurial thinking to a full-time self-employed individual. The work I have been doing is most likely going to be redundant, if not useless, in the new economy. I am reinventing myself to be a full-time traveler, writer, and speaker.
I am well suited for changes because of my freedom lifestyle. My intuition has been prodding me for years to switch away from my current work. While I have not paid it the attention it deserved, I did listen to its promptings and have been focused on writing and traveling for a few years. It is time to turn it into a laser-focused undertaking.
As always, thank you for reading and responding.
More about me:
Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.
He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)
“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”
