A Long Term Perspective On Writing Success
A lot of writers think in a very short term way when it comes to professional success.
A lot of people think that their first novel needs to sell a million copies. That’s unlikely.
A lot of people think that their blog is going to get ten thousand visitors a day within the first month. They want to live off that sweet affiliate money.
They’re not only going to be far off the mark in their predictions, but they’re also going to damage themselves psychologically by following this approach.
This article will give you a little long term perspective on how you should approach online stuff, freelance writing and your own projects.
Writing Success and Intellectual Property Law
Providing you don’t sell the rights to your work, everything you write and publish is your intellectual property.
Legally, you own the rights to that intellectual property for the rest of your life. Your heirs will own your words for seventy years after your death as well.
That means that the words you write now can earn you money for a lot longer than the rest of your life.
In short, this means there’s no real hurry for you to earn money for your words. Let’s bear that in mind for the rest of this article.
(As a real world example… you could write a review for a book. You make $1 for every copy sold. You sell one copy a month. You live for another sixty years. That review in your first year is worth a measly $12. However, over the course of its lifetime, you earn $720 from that review.)
Freelance Writing, Copywriting, Working For Others
Bear in mind the legal rights that you hold.
Let’s say you write product reviews on Upwork for $10 a pop. You can write a couple in an hour, so at $20 an hour for freelance writing, you think you’re doing alright.
Run the math.
Each review you write could bring you hundreds of dollars over the course of its lifetime.
Think about the rights to the work you’re selling. Think very carefully.
That’s not to say “Don’t ever write for anyone else,” but bear in mind the above calculation when it comes to the negotiating table.
Your Own Projects: Books
I have written a few fiction books. I’ve written short stories and I’ve written a couple of longer books. I’ve also written a few non-fiction books as well under various pen names.
None of those have been massive successes. I haven’t put anything into marketing them. I haven’t hired a cover designer or an editor for those books. They’re basically experiments and publishing experience for when I work on bigger projects later.
But nearly every month Amazon deposit money into my account. Sometimes, other companies do too.
Those books make me a little money every month, and that adds up to more than you’d think over a year… even if you’re selling a couple of copies of each book per month and you only make a couple of dollars each time. (If you sell more than that, it adds up quickly.)
In comparison, I’ve also sold short stories to small publishers. I did this back when I was writing as a hobby.
I made a few $50-$100 advances, so those stories weren’t terrible.
However, those short stories were part of collections… collections that have to sell hundreds of copies to make back that advance before I’ll ever (and I’ll never) get any royalties. They also require the publishing company to keep pushing the book and stay in business in general.
If I’d held onto those short stories and published them by myself, they’d have made back their advance within a year, and then I’d have a potential rest of my lifetime +70 years to enjoy the added money.
Again, I’m not saying that you should never sell a story to a publisher… but bear the long term perspective in mind.
Your Own Projects: Websites
It costs $10 a year to run a site, give or take.
If you expect a ton of success off the bat with a website, then you’re going to need a lot of skill and possibly some luck. This is especially true if you’re starting your first site. This sort of stuff takes time to learn about.
Again though, from a long term perspective, there’s no hurry.
I bought my first domain in 2010. (I think.) It’s still sat there to this day, earning me money. Not a lot of money, but once you have an established website, providing you pay the $10 a year, you can keep it there static forever. You shouldn’t delete a website unless you’ve got a good reason to.
Now I have a ton of websites that just sit there. I’ve accumulated them over time.
None of these are Google. They aren’t going to be the next Instagram or whatever. It doesn’t matter.
For instance, there’s a niche site I built in a weekend. I felt like it was going to be a failure when I started working on it. It made a couple of sales three months in. If I put the money from those sales solely into running that website, then it would have paid for itself for fifteen years at that point.
As it stands, that website has now made enough money to pay for the domains for my whole niche site challenge; twenty-eight domains’ worth. It’s been alive since May, and is going to fund a ton of other little minion sites which I’ll build in a weekend too.
A lot of guys get caught up in the glamour of internet riches. They see the sales letter with the guru in a rented Bentley or the fake Paypal statements and expect overnight success. You’ll get discouraged holding yourself to that standard, but with a long term perspective, you’ll do much better financially and psychologically.
Final Thoughts
This topic is designed to keep everyone going.
We’re over halfway through the year, and New Year’s Resolutions are long gone. It’s summer and we’d all rather be outside instead of working. That’s ok.
It’s easy to get stuck in a perpetual cycle of “I need to achieve overnight success right now!” and then get down when you don’t achieve something by tomorrow.
Writing is a great profession because of the upside with a long term perspective. Very few jobs will pay you repeatedly for one action through the rest of your life and beyond.
Think wisely, plan wisely and make the most of it.