What I’ll Do When My Online Writing Income Gets Sliced by Half
What goes up… does come down
The first thing I do is…
… to take a break.
I know me. I am invested in building my thing online and off. When results are not showing, I sulk.
And I tend to be, erm, frustrated beyond words.
I mean… indulge this old boy. I may be 40 in human years, but I am just a kid in the world of 0s and 1s.
It is psychologically difficult for me to absorb the online earnings shock when it drops by 50%.
Not when the stock market takes a nose-dive at the same time.
My Simple 1st Trick
First, I step aside.
Yes, as simple as that. Here’s why. I get too carried away when I continue to write with Frustration sitting beside me.
He will go to the ends of the world to provoke my sense of feeble calm.
- “Why are you doing this? You know you suck at it, right?”
- “Hey, you just spelled grren wrongly.”
- “Relax. Why not play a game?”
I’ve learned not to give in. How? I walk away.
It is easy to continue tapping away when results frustrate you. Trust me. But there is no point. This draft you are working on will not get good results, too.
Words reflect our thoughts.
We become incoherent.
It becomes a futile rant.
Readers can sense it.
And look. Let’s be honest here. Long-time, loyal, die-hard fans may have a hard time at work and home that day. They want a good, relaxing, beautiful read.
Emotional minefields create friction for our readers. They swipe left.
Avoid that.
And keep things simple.
Go to the corner of the road and kick some pebbles. Vent it. Piss it.
Let the rocks feel your formidable power under the moonlight.
And then get back to work the next day.
The Day of Reckoning Starts Tomorrow
Take a deep breath.
Fill your lungs.
Repeat 3 times.
Done? Okay, go. Let’s begin.
I will start by performing a rolling analysis. This is what I do.
I will review the stats for the recent month with a complete set of earnings. I take note of moonshots. Then, I make a ratio of flops to shots.
The purpose is not to derive the number.
I must understand the why.
If I only have 1 moonshot article and the month before I had 3 — I will stop myself right there and think.
- “Have my headlines been recycling too frequently?”
- “Have I defaulted to my fallback style of writing?”
- “Are my articles getting unreadable for readers?”
I have a confession to make at this point.
Firstly, there are specific items I look for when I audit my articles. I am not a fan of blind audits. It gets me nowhere. I use a checklist.
A rough one, but a good enough one.
I check,
- Headlines — Are they bland? Evocative? Do I deliver my promise?
- Subtitles — Is it concise? Does it complement my headline?
- Introduction — Can readers relate? How fast does it read?
- Image — Is it attractive? Does it tell a story?
- Image text — Do I explain why this image?
- Paragraphs — Do I get breathless reading it?
All this while, I keep my eyes on my articles.
Why do I say that?
Well, this is a segue to my next point.
Avoid Checking How Well Brilliant Writers Perform
I have one hypothesis when it comes to online writing.
- Brilliant writers are brilliant despite my presence and writing.
- I suck because I am not good enough.
They are 2 parallel lines that never meet.
You may find this baffling. But it provides a high cushion of plunge relief… for me.
I like to believe that I’m the driver at the steering wheel. If I crash, it’s because I screwed it up. I want to review what happened to me that day.
That is the simple reason.
The real complex reason is…
… I am a sucker for comparison.
I like to compare. I count scores. I want the sports team I support to win.
The opposite is true.
I. Just. Hate. To. Lose.
In short, I’m a sore loser. So, I must resist peeking at other’s performance when I’m in a self-triggered review. I will nuke myself.
Mr. Frustration becomes Mr. Self-Destruct.
I know myself too well. So, I pull back.
Do I lift my head and check how others are doing? Yes.
The internet world is big enough for us to learn (read: copy) from successful ones we know and yet not cannibalize their results.
This is the widest, deepest, most transparent world we have built for ourselves.
Of course, we owe it to ourselves to learn and adapt… ahm ahm…
And trust me.
Brilliant writers do the same, too.
- When they copy, they turn trash into art.
- When we copy, we turn art into counterfeits.
We must, erm, learn to copy better.
For next month’s earnings, of course…
The Pre-Close
Because there is always a pre-close.
I will also look for clues of changes beyond my control.
I think we know these too well.
Changes such as…
- Algorithmic updates,
- Policies favoring one genre above the others,
- Clickbait-driven topic suppression,
- Content distribution changes,
- Discoverability updates,
- Others,
… will impact our current earnings.
The rules of the game have changed. And when they do, our stats will tell the story.
I will watch it, assess what works and no longer today, and take time to return to my groove.
Yes, it can be painful. But unless and until we have control over the algorithm — It makes no sense to stick to our outdated winning formula.
We are swimmers in a big ocean.
When the current changes direction, change with it.
Don’t fight it.
The Close
Do we work on other online income streams?
Trust me. I think about THAT all the time.
The simple answer is yes.
The complicated answer is when.
I can go all-in to start writing e-books or contribute work to other platforms when my sole source of online writing income gets sliced by half.
I can.
But it takes time to build those up from Ground 0, too.
And so, this is my approach.
Diversify, but I spend time figuring out how to return to and exceed the previous level of earnings. Because the latter is the most familiar form of earnings stream.
An evolution of the writing platform means the bulk of what we know is still intact.
Starting from what we already know is advantageous.
And I prefer to work on something I already know.
And get better.
Again.
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