Maggie Bailey
The title of this post may be a bit misleading! Because the subject-matter is not something I am an expert at, or qualified to give advice about. I am hoping someone here might be able to advise *me*! I have been trying to make a living as a freelance writer for quite a number of years now, without success. I have earned a certain amount of money through writing content for Internet websites, covering different areas of interest. But it only gave me a very small side-income, and sad to say, the websites I used to write for have now all either closed down or they are still running but no longer paying contributors. It is all very disheartening. The small amount of money I earned from writing for those websites was a lifeline to me, since I live on a miniscule income anyway, so every little helps. It seems so hard to get your work accepted by any type of publications, either online or traditional print, and the rates of pay for published writers are usually very low in any case.
As I have mentioned here before, I have written a short self-help book, which I have published on Amazon. So far, the sales are slow, but I am always hopeful. I probably need to promote it more. That being said, it is really ultra-competitive on Amazon anyway, trying to sell your own books, because countless other people are doing the same thing. If anyone here is interested in my book, I do now have three 5-star reviews for it! So the feedback has all been very positive so far. Here is the link to it:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1711000620?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
Photo of my book cover, copyright Maggie Bailey 2019.
Just writing won’t do , you need to do a whole lot of PR work on social media. Try sites like Hubpages where you earn passive income very month for your articles.
I face the same problems now, most of the sites I write for have become no pay or closed down.
Thank you Dawn, Yes, that is what I thought; writing alone earns you next to nothing. You need to do a load of marketing too, which I am not that good at, and which takes up so much time and energy. I did sign up for Hubpages but never did very well at it. I think I need to find another platform for marketing my stuff.
Very interesting. I want to write books all my life but earning money is very hard and writing steals all your time. I wrote for an international model agency. I have been writing blogs since 2012. I had a lot of blogs but I am writing now Halcombe Norilsk (English) since 2012 and Ser un Tusitala (Spanish) since 2014. I have been in Virily since September, I have not received payment as yet. And when you get money the money you receive is a very small amount. I have published 4 books (one of them is in the making) but it is really hard to sell books.
Absolutely Halcombe. Thank you for commenting. Yes, it has always been very hard to sell books as a first-time, unknown author anyway, but these days it is even harder than it used to be. Yes, it hardly seems worth being on Virily at all, because the earnings are so pitifully, painfully slow, even if you spend all day on here, posting and interacting! The only reason really I keep my account open is so that I can promote things, like my book on Amazon, as in my post above.
It is the audience that you have to look for and for this you might like to contact agents that do this kind of work
Thank you Grace. I don’t know how to find an audience and I have also contacted literary agents with no luck. Everywhere you turn when it comes to being a successful writer, there are always huge obstacles in the way it appears. I am still hoping to have a bit more success with Amazon, if I publish more things on there.
Amazon could be your answer. All the best.
I too am a freelance writer and I have also written for various writing sites that have went under. I am now writing for an educational online and print magazine writing lectures and lessons. I also work as a tutor/writer for a tutoring site writing for their Solution Library, this is where I devise a question and give a correct answer and hope that someone in the field will download it. I am hoping they will approve my upcoming eBook as well. I have been writing for this site for seven years now and I do pretty well most of the time even if it is based out of Canada.
Hi 1Mark, thank you for commenting. Would you mind sharing the details of the sites you work for, i.e. the website addresses? I am thinking of signing up to them myself, if they are looking for any new writers.
Thank you for commenting Doc Andersen. Yes, I think it is these days, all about social media. The trouble is, I find it really draining being on the Internet a lot, and particularly on social media websites. I just don’t have the energy for it! I guess I am going to have to promote myself online more though, if I really want to have any success with my writing.
it is funny, I wrote a sarcastic piece about a pizza delivery drone, that has over 7 million views to date. I have written other pieces that I thought were a huge impact, that ended up getting 100 views. It is all about social media exposure in the end!
As you say Doc Andersen, it is all about views on social media, but how do you actually make money just from views and likes? How do you get people to pay for your writing? I still don’t understand that. I guess you have to raise your profile enough, have a lot of followers on your blog or Instagram page, for example, and then once you have a huge audience, you can start promoting your books and other materials on your platform, and you are quite likely to make sales then from among your followers. It must take so much time and effort to get to that point though. I don’t think I could get a huge number of followers, and in any case, I don’t want to be online constantly, sharing trivia about my life! There must be another way surely….
you are wrestling with what I have been fighting with for the past two years. the blend of my time, versus the required connection to make money
Quite. I think you have to love being online 24/7, constantly sharing stuff about yourself, and how then do you get anything else done??? There are not that many people who make money online anyway, from what I can tell, only a select few.
i think you have hit the nail on the head. I write a lot, because that is something I love (it is my hobby). based on that i find i struggle to generate consistent income.