Why Writing Online Isn’t A Ridiculously Easy Way to Make Money

Despite what you read on the internet

Despite all the articles describing how ridiculously easy it is to make money writing online, most writers and content creators will fail. On Medium, most writers won’t earn more than $100 in a month and it isn’t because they aren’t following guides like 5 Simple Rules to Make $1000 on Medium.

Here’s the truth though. It isn’t easy to make money writing online. It isn’t easy to make money writing on Medium or similar websites.

The path to making a successful career writing online requires overcoming several challenges while also getting a little bit lucky. While this might sound a little depressing, I’m not trying to rain on your parade.

I’m sure plenty of you have read the hundreds of articles about making money with writing, followed the steps closely, and still failed. You might have felt a little embarrassed, given up, or decided that you must have done something wrong. After all, a very successful writer swears by it so how could it be wrong?

We Forget About the External Contributors to Success

Humans aren’t very good at figuring out why something happens intuitively. When we consider factors like success, we run into a fundamental attribution error, where we don’t consider the contribution of external events and the environment. Subconsciously, both a successful writer and someone reading their guide may attribute all their success to their intrinsic skills.

Someone with financial stability may not worry as much about making ends meet, reducing the stress and pressure of writing. They can invest more time into writing, even if they know they won’t make any money for several months.

Another person could simply get lucky, having an article go viral and receiving a lot of opportunities afterward. After all, I have no idea why a few of my articles tended to go viral, while others within the same niche barely reached 100 views.

Even your family situation could affect your ability to make money writing online. If you are a caregiver or a parent, it may be much harder to sit down and write uninterrupted. Many of these little external factors could be important determinants of someone’s success as a writer. But you don’t get that from a rosy piece writing about a few simple rules to make $100 off a blogpost.

Survivorship Bias

No one wants to read a story or an article about all the reasons that making money on a particular platform is difficult. Everyone wants to learn how to make the big bucks, naturally, everyone seeks that kind of information. However, these successful writers only represent a sliver of every blogger and writer trying to make their career (or side hustle) online.

This is yet another scenario where our intuition drops the ball. Often, we don’t consider the swathes of writers who aren’t successful. Even if a certain strategy is discussed among successful writers as useful, there may be thousands of voices from struggling writers that you won’t hear. This is called the survivorship bias.

Just because 50 people that are successful use the same strategies doesn’t mean that these strategies lead to success. We’re terrible at thinking about the bigger picture and are quick to assume correlation or causation.

The Amount of Time Writing Doesn’t Determine How Much Money You Make

Like plenty of other writers, I started writing steadily on Medium, and over the course of a year, I amassed a decent following. But despite spending hours and hours of work crafting my articles, I barely made $20 in a given month.

Only after six months or so establishing myself, did I start getting external clients looking for freelance writing. But at the beginning though, the rates were atrocious and extremely low. It took me a lot of time and writing to get to a place where people will want to pay me well.

The other reason, I think anyway, that I’ve attained some of these clients is because of my expertise in a niche area of science. If you find yourself in such a niche, you can build out a portfolio of articles to showcase it. Specific niches might mean it will be easier for you to break into the writing game.

However, that means if you’re starting up without a specific focus, you’ve got a lot more competition for different roles and jobs. If you’re using UpWork, that might mean taking a few jobs that pay very poorly to build up your reputation.

Or you can wait and hope that something you write goes viral, and opens the door to more opportunities. The best you can do to improve your writing and your readership is to write consistently, trying your hand at different publications. Does it guarantee you’ll make a lot of money? No, but it might improve your skills and build out your portfolio.

Takeaway

For a few lucky individuals, making money by writing online is super easy. While they may relay their tips and strategies for success in earnest, there’s plenty of reasons these tips may not work for you.

As humans, we attribute success solely to the individual, forgetting about the external factors that lurk behind the scenes. We never hear from the hundreds of thousands of individuals who fail at the writing game, or at the very least, find making money online difficult. And of course, it's frustrating writing dozens of articles without receiving good compensation, but that’s normal when starting a writing career.

Remember, if you fail, it’s not because you lack some sacred knowledge or professional secret that can only be found perusing clickbait-y articles.

Like what you read? I’m a former grad student, neuroscientist, and journalist with multiple scientific publications. You can find my work on Medium, Massive Science, Futurism, and Being Patient. If you’re interested in my writing, you can read more here. Subscribe to my Substack for a bi-weekly roundup of my stories. If you’ve got questions or would like to tap my brain, you can book a consultation.