If you want to earn money from your writing, are you valuing it highly enough? Here’s a quote from financial guru Suze Orman:
“I used to struggle to put a monetary value on my work ... When I started my own firm, I found it so tough to bill for my services that I asked people to pay me what they thought my work was worth. To my amazement, people paid me more than I would ever have dreamed of billing them. It was an eye-opener. If others valued me more than I valued myself, I knew I needed a serious attitude adjustment.”
I believe that’s true of a lot of writers, too.
There are quite a few writers who are so happy to get published that they’ll do it for nothing or almost nothing. I did the same when I was starting out—my payment often was just seeing my name in print.
The internet’s emphasis on giving things away is a factor as well. I do that—on my various web sites you’ll see a lot of free content. That’s partly because I don’t want to leave out people who are short of money and partly because I hope that when people see the quality of the free content they will feel more confident that the things I charge for, like the Writing Breakthrough Strategy program (which re-starts in mid-January 2012) will be high quality, too.
Do you need a change of attitude?
If you set your prices while still in the ‘free or almost free’ state of mind, you’ll undervalue yourself and your work.The different mindset you need at that point rests on three premises:
- You are a professional. Doctors may spend a day a month donating their services to a people’s clinic, but that doesn’t mean they’ll charge less when you see them for their professional services. If you’re a good writer it has taken you time and effort to learn your craft and you deserve to be compensated for it.
- Your services will create value for the person buying them. Whether you’re writing copy or submitting a short story to a magazine, the people who buy what you do expect to profit from your work, so it’s reasonable for you to expect that, too. They’re not doing you a favor by buying your work, it’s a business transaction.
- You are willing to go where the money is. If a magazine says they’ll pay a penny per word, you’re not going to convince them to pay a pound or a dollar a word. Leave those publications (and other low-paying situations) to the beginner, or those seeking other kinds of satisfaction from writing. Find out where the money is, what the requirements are of those markets, and write for them.
Where is the money?
I suspect your question is, what are those well-paying markets?
The main ones are:
- copywriting
- screenwriting (TV and film--commissioned)
- a handful of high-paying magazines
- technical writing (sometimes)
- consulting
- teaching private workshops (sometimes)
All of these are highly competitive and demand specific skills.
There are also types of writing that have the potential to be highly-rewarding financially, including books (whether traditionally published or self-published) and screenplays written on spec (without a commission).
Some of these have paid off well for me, including some educational materials I wrote years ago on a low-upfront, high royalty basis, that sold extremely well, and a couple of screenplays I wrote on spec. There have also been quite a few that haven’t paid off. Overall, I’d rather take a chance on these than accept the very small bird in the hand offered by many buyers.
The most promising of the markets with potential may be self-published books because your initial investment, at least in monetary terms, is small. The possible reward is large, but only if you know how to market what you’ve created. You can do it yourself, whereas marketing a screenplay yourself is very difficult, requiring you to jump another hurdle, getting an agent.
Which of these do you choose?
There are three approaches to making money from writing. None of these options is wrong, but it’s useful to be clear on which one you want to pursue:
1: You can choose to write for free or very small financial rewards, either to gain experience or because you have other sources of income and don’t need to earn from your writing.
2: You can have a mix—some writing done for pleasure and experience, free or almost, and some for paying sources.
3: You can focus on finding the overlap between the skills you have or are willing to develop, and the marketplace that offers good compensation, or at least the potential for it. If you’re in this group, switching to a professional mindset when you set your fees is important.
(For guidance on both traditional and guerrilla marketing tactics for writers, see "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)
