Summary

The author discusses the challenges of transitioning from writing for personal fulfillment to writing for income, which includes balancing personal expression with audience expectations and dealing with fluctuating earnings and viewership.

Abstract

The author begins with a personal reflection on the initial joy of writing online as a means to document thoughts for future reflection. However, the introduction of monetary success leads to a shift in focus from personal expression to audience engagement and financial gain. This shift causes the author to struggle with authenticity, writing quality, and the emotional impact of fluctuating viewership and earnings. The author eventually adopts new mindsets to reconcile personal satisfaction with audience expectations, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, vulnerability, and accepting imperfection in writing. The journey is ongoing, and the author invites readers to follow along as they navigate the complexities of writing with purpose and profit.

Opinions

Writing online initially served as a personal archive of thoughts and experiences for the author.
The prospect of making money from writing introduced pressure to cater to audience preferences and expectations.
The pursuit of higher viewership and earnings led to a compromise in the author's writing quality and authenticity.
The author realized that trying to please everyone was unsustainable and led to a decrease in writing quality.
By mentally disconnecting earnings from time spent writing, the author regained focus on personal expression.
Vulnerability and authenticity are seen as more valuable for building a loyal readership than controversial or polarizing content.
The author emphasizes the importance of clear communication over the pursuit of perfection in writing.
The author acknowledges the ongoing nature of their journey in finding the right balance between personal satisfaction and commercial success in writing.

This Is The Hardest Part About Writing Online That Nobody Talks About

The struggles we writers go through turned out to be worse than I ever anticipated.

Money is a double-edged sword.

Back when I started writing online, it was because of a genuine desire to record down my thoughts so that the future me could look back on them and remember what life was like for me now.

I’d imagine myself 10 years from now, on a warm, sunny afternoon, resting indoors on a comfortable sofa, reading back through my old pieces of work, consisting of ambiguous amalgamations of words, paragraphs and cringy references, and wondering what the hell must’ve been going through my mind back then.

For me, I had always found it a worthwhile effort to document my thoughts and ideas because I know that one day I will suffer the same fate as those who have lived before me.

Death is the one thing that we all have in common and it’s why I want to pass on and transfer my own experiences and the lessons I’ve learnt to you guys so that they, in turn, can be passed on, again and again, from generation to generation, even when I’m long gone.

Ok, I didn’t mean for this to sound super deep and profound but it’s true. That is the real reason why made the decision to start writing.

Little did I know though, that in only a few months' time, this entire philosophy would change…

The reason — money.

Because I made writing online a way to express my thoughts and clear my mind up, I never really focused that much on quantity.

Sometimes, I’d sit down to write out of pure boredom. Other times, I’d do it because I felt inspired after watching some random motivational YouTube video.

I never sat down to write because I wanted to make money.

…Until my 10th month happened.

Prior to that month, I was earning around $2 to $8 a month on this platform and yeah, it was fun! I got a few views here and there and the responses from readers were all super positive.

I thought I was contributing something great to the world.

Then suddenly, the money jumped from $5 to over $200!

It was crazy!

Never in my life did I think that this type of growth was possible!

Now all of a sudden, it was no longer just about me and what I had to say, it was about what my readers wanted to hear.

I began to rethink the way I structured my sentences, when to add jokes, when to use sophisticated language, when to just be chill, etc. But slowly, it began to overwhelm me.

Every day was now worth a set amount of money calculated by dividing the average I earned in a month by 30 days, and every second I wasn’t writing felt like a second wasted.

No longer was I writing based on my own thoughts and feelings, it was now based on how I wanted the audience to experience my words.

As selfless as this is, it came at a cost — the cost of my own conscience.

I started writing in a way to deliberately provoke an emotional response and said things that I didn’t even necessarily believe in myself, all in the hopes of increasing my read time and view count.

For a short amount of time, it worked.

I began getting more views, and I jumped from $200 to over $1k a month, but slowly, the quality of my writing degraded as I got more and more in my own head, overanalysing everything.

Of course, views also can’t stay high forever, so every time it dipped, I felt powerless to do anything about it and worthless because hardly anybody was reading my work.

This is the reality of things for a lot of writers out there and I’m sure even experienced writers can relate to having these kinds of thoughts and issues at some point in their careers.

The feeling is basically debilitating.

Obviously, as you can guess, these toxic mentalities about writing were not going to be of any benefit to me or my audience in the long run, so luckily for me, I decided to sit down to try and figure this out.

At first, it was a slow process of figuring out what kinds of mindsets to adopt and it’s still working progress at but as of now, I found a few solutions which seemed to be working well.

Firstly, I made a huge effort to mentally disconnect my earnings from my time. Realising that views and earnings are totally out of my control and are bound to go up and down, I focused on writing what I wanted to write instead of making blind judgments about what my readers wanted to read.

Everyone is different and each individual has their own interests, hobbies, passions and beliefs so trying to cater to every single person out there will only end up in disaster.

Secondly, I recognised that vulnerability actually makes for a more relatable read whereas being super controversial and polarising for no reason just makes the readers trust you less. Even though I may get more views on a few articles, those views won’t translate to as many followers or email subscribers who are going to stay for the journey.

For dealing with overanalysis, I also took on a different approach. Now, instead of trying to make everything perfect, I let go of the belief that it needs to be in the first place and concentrate on communicating my message in the clearest way I can. Any grammar mistakes and misspellings I make along the way simply increase the humanness of my work.

These are only a few of the mindsets I have worked hard to adopt so far and there are plenty of other ones I am still working on developing right now.

The journey of writing is one that is long and winding, filled with twists, turns and slaps in the face.

I will continue to experiment with my writing style, my delivery and the way I communicate my message through my work as I get better and better at this and I hope you’d come along for the ride as well.

Give me a follow if you want to join me on this trek and to all those writers out there who are struggling with the same problems and issues — you will eventually get through this.

I believe in it.

I have to.

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