The Simple Math That Will Help You Make More Money as a Writer

Even if you’re just getting started

You don’t need to know calculus to make more money as a writer. In fact, knowing calculus might even be detrimental to making it as a writer.

But here’s a fun fact about many self-made millionaires I know. They are always doing math. Even thought they have accountants, they are consistently figuring out the math related to their business.

And it’s all simple math. We’re talking addition, subtraction, basic multiplication, and a tiny bit of division. And I’m about to share with you the exact math I’ve learned from them, so that you can apply it to your writing. You’re about to find out a mathematical formula that can help you determine what you need to do as a writer to make the money you feel you need.

This is especially useful for writers just starting out because it can keep you motivated. When you know what you need to do each day to work toward your goal, you will stay motivated. Knowing where you want to go will help you to clear your path.

Let’s keep it simple and say you want to reach the standard golden milestone of $1MM or One Million Dollars.

Entrepreneur Math

As a writer, you are an entrepreneur. Unless of course you are hired to be a journalist at some big news company or something — then you’re an employee. But that doesn’t mean you can’t treat your career like an entrepreneur like say Oprah, Betty Liu, or Anderson Cooper.

But if you’re an entrepreneur, it helps to know basic math. So let’s give some examples.

Tim Ferriss regularly pushes out great podcasts for entrepreneurs. One of his recent podcasts with a popular entrepreneur went through his thought process to develop million dollar product ideas over a weekend. And it starts with math.

Let’s use a super basic high-level example. And this is done much easier today than it has ever been done before because of the tools available.

So let’s say you want to sell dumbbells. You can find that Google gets over 1 million searches PER MONTH for the word dumbbells. To be precise, I looked it up, and here’s what it looks like.

· The search term dumbbells gets 823,000 hits per month.

· The search term dumbbell set gets 301,000 hits per month.

· The search term adjustable dumbbells gets 201,000 hits per month.

This is over 1 million searches per month. Keep in mind your goal of making $1MM. Next, let’s be extra conservative and say you get 1% or 10,000 searchers per month to look at your dumbbells from Google. And say only 1% or 100 of those searchers buy a dumbbell. Most good marketing people can get at least a 5% conversion there, so this is a really low number.

How much do you need to sell to make your goal of $1MM?

Check this out. You can find websites that sell dumbbells. Their prices range anywhere from $50-$700 for different types and sets. Determine which one or type of dumbbell you want to sell, and compare prices.

Then break that down. Say you want to sell dumbbells for $200. In that case you will need to sell $1,000,000/$200 = 5000 units. With COGS or Cost of Goods Sold calculated in, your profit will be less, so you have to work that math in.

But let’s break it down further.

100 dumbbells * 12 months = 1200 dumbbells sold during the year 5000/1200 = 4.17 which means it will take you about 4.17 years to make your first million in revenue.

Remember these are very conservative numbers and has very little to do with writing. But this is how entrepreneurs do their math. Anyone who is launching a new product or considering a business venture will start with basic math like this.

In fact, for writers, the math is even easier. For example, a writer on the Medium Partner Program doesn’t have to worry about shipping. And you don’t have to do much research on competitor pricing. It is based on talent and effort.

So let’s apply this….

Simple Math for Writers

If you are writing as part of something like the Medium Partner Program, you are taking your career into your own hands and becoming an entrepreneur. Let’s keep in our mind the goal of $1MM.

Now let’s say at the end of your first month, you wrote 10 articles which isn’t very much at all. One every 3 days is easy. Some regularly paid staff writers write 12 or more per day! And some of them do it for free!

So say at the end of your first month, you made $20. $20 / 10 means that you’re getting roughly $2 per article.

At $2 per article, you will need to write 500,000 articles to make $1MM. You could try to make it less painful by saying you’ll triple your writing to 30 articles next month to make $60. But it still doesn’t sound that enticing.

And this is where complete newbies turnaround and say “screw that! I’m gonna go livestream video games!” This is where you will separate yourself from the hobbyists. This is where you become a pro and move ahead of the pack.

You need to look beyond just those first couple months.

Because not only will the pay on your articles continue to add up as you add more articles… But you’ll get better at writing. You’re also virtually guaranteed to get noticed by somebody. And you’ll build an audience. And you’ll have material to write a book.

Say you have one article that goes huge because you’ve spent so much time studying ”how to write an exciting article people will love to read.” Not only do you have the potential to make much more money…

But the attention you get can lead to other things.

Keeping it Going

So say you stuck with it for six months writing 10 articles for the first 3 months. Then from month 4–6 you kicked it up a notch because you had so much fun, and you didn’t want to be a quitter. And in months 4–6 you did 20 articles per month.

You are now up to 90 total articles that are potentially earning you money without you doing anything!

You probably didn’t make enough to brag about in those 6 months. But now, you’ve got tons of material. You can write a book with your material. You can expand into other writing gigs. You can use it for your portfolio. And during those six months, you grew your audience.

So suddenly more people are reading your work, so you’re not just making $2 per article, you’re making closer to $3 per article. But say you combine articles for a book that you sell at $11.99 a copy. And say from those 90 articles, you were able to use some as part of a portfolio sample that netted you a job that paid you $1000 for multiple articles.

Then from there, you do the math again.

Say you made roughly $2.50 on average for those 90 articles. Let’s be pessimistic and say none of them “got super popular.”

In that case, you made $225 over 6 months. And you have material for a book you want to sell for $11.99. And you booked a $1000 job. All from 90 articles and some leg work to get jobs. And all of that done from the comfort of wherever you write from, with the extra time to do whatever you wished.

So now you’re at $998,775 from your $1MM goal in your first 6 months. It is again at this point that most will just give up. Then there are those who will continue to leverage their past opportunities to grow their brand and business.

If you know 90 articles can help you secure $1225 after six months, wouldn’t that motivate you to write more? These are pessimistic numbers, but there are people making significantly more than a couple hundred dollars a year on Medium — say the six figure range.

What you do from here is go read what they are doing.

But again, this math is still small potato math. As your skill improves, the numbers tied to your math will grow. As you get more followers, your value will go up. As your value as a writer increases, and you become more well known, your opportunities will start to multiply. You shouldn’t quit your job thinking you’ll make a million over night.

But once you start to do the simple math, you will start to spot the other opportunities that can come your way. And once you know the big picture and the big goal, you will have a better grasp of what it will take to get there. And from there it is all about putting in the work.

The math wasn’t put in this article to give you a “play by play” strategy book. There are plenty of those all over the internet. It was written to help you to start to think like an entrepreneur if you want to become a writer. And when you have that knowledge, you’re either going to give up early, or keep on pushing.

Which one are you?

Best Wishes,

Emmett

P.S. If you find this article helpful, find more exclusive ideas by checking out The Ideator Journal.