Did I have fun even when treating writing like a job?  Hell yes. I didn’t enjoy . . . → Read More: Writing Experiment Wrap-Up]]> I’ve been running this writing experiment for a year now, and it’s time to evaluate it.  I’ll answer the questions listed on my About page.  Did I have fun?  Was I good at it?  Did I make any money?

The Big Questions

Did I have fun even when treating writing like a job?  Hell yes. I didn’t enjoy every minute of it.  There were times when I had to push myself very hard to reach the deadlines I set for myself.  There were times when I wanted to quit writing, and you probably noticed that I took a long break in the summer.  But I love writing and I love everything I produced for this writing experiment.  Writing is incredibly rewarding for me.  I wrote a novel, helped some people, and earned a few dollars.  Best of all, I learned a ton. I love learning.

Did people like my work?  I think so.  I didn’t get many readers for my novel, but those that did read it seemed to like it and gave me some good feedback.  I know I have helped some people with my eHow articles, because my 25 articles combined have been viewed 9,872 times.  I think that’s pretty cool.  Best of all, I received several warm emails from newsletter subscribers around the world thanking me for helping them achieve their goals.  That was the coolest result of this writing experiment.

Did I earn enough money to quit my day job?  Not even close. I made very little money from this writing experiment, but I still think it’s OK because I learned a lot.  I’ve been doing much reading lately and figuring out why I didn’t make much money:

• Lack of search engine optimization (SEO)
• Sales copy was not persuasive and compelling
• Lack of persistence and long-term planning (I slacked off for a few months in the summer time)
• Targeting the wrong customers with my email list (many subscribers did not have credit cards)
• Not using my email list to the fullest extent, both to really connect with subscribers and to persuade them to buy

In future projects I will avoid these problems and really focus on sales.  It did feel nice to help my newsletter subscribers by giving free information, but my primary purpose here was to generate income to facilitate a career change.  I know it makes me sound like a slimy salesman, but if I want to make this into a livable income, I have got to persuade people to pull out their wallets.

Words Written and Dollars Earned

For the past year I used spreadsheets to keep track of how much I wrote and how much I earned.  Here’s the breakdown for you.

As you can see, I didn’t earn much from writing.  If you do the math, it comes out to less than one cent per word.    But it’s so cool to think that I wrote over 100,000 words in the past year.  I love it.

Despite not earning much, I liked doing it and it was truly extra money.  It’s like a hobby that pays you a few extra dollars.  That’s better than a hobby that breaks even, like sitting around watching TV, and much better than a hobby you have to continuously pour money into, like golf.  Positive cash flows are nice.  Wouldn’t you agree?

Success!

Despite not earning enough income to allow a career change, I’m still calling this experiment a success.  I learned a great deal.  I got out there and found ways to make money on my own.  I gained confidence in myself when I wrote that novel in less than 30 days.  I built a little courage when I put a product online for sale, and learned how to analyze failures when the product flopped.  I was extremely proud when newsletter subscribers told me they valued my advice.

Best of all, my level of interest in writing, freelancing, entrepreneurship, and making money on the Internet has skyrocketed.  I’m totally hooked.

Future Plans

I’m going to keep writing and making web sites, but I’m not going to extend this exact experiment.  It’s hard to write both novels/newsletters/articles and this blog at the same time.  I might have enough time to do it, but not enough focus.  I’m not a hardcore writer that can write for 8 hours straight, especially after a long week at work.  I get too distracted and have too many other goals.  So I’ve learned that I need to pick and choose my writing projects carefully.

Another reason not to extend this writing experiment is because I won’t be focusing only on writing anymore.  I’m going to focus on entrepreneurship and self-employment in general, with a key focus on making money on the Internet.  I’ve been thinking about several different projects where the only writing I do would be for marketing, such as:

• Creating games and apps for smart phones
• Affiliate marketing
• Freelancing as a programmer or SEO consultant
• Projects that I would outsource to have someone else write/create them

That’s the main reason I’m not going to continue this “writing” experiment: it’s going to become so much more than just writing.

Next Project

My next project is a blog about self-employment.  Recently I learned a lot about creating web sites and getting them to the front page of Google.  If you can find some golden keywords and get to the number 1 spot in the Google results for those keywords, you’ll get plenty of free traffic.  Then you can monetize your site by either selling products or showing advertisements.

I invite you to please visit my new blog, Best Self Employment Ideas, and subscribe to the RSS feed to receive updates.  Some if it is still under construction and it needs a new theme, but I’m working on it as fast as I can.  I’ll be adding new content 3 times per week, at least at first, and hopefully I’ll be climbing the ranks of Google results.  I’ve already progressed from 303 to 269 in the past few days, which is very exciting.

The End

Thanks very much for following me through my writing experiment.  I hope you learned something and enjoyed it as much as I did!

The really cool thing about September is I got a great idea for my next online . . . → Read More: September Results]]> September was a complete success for me!  I earned $105 by writing articles for Demand Studios.  What an awesome feeling!  I know a hundred dollars isn’t much, but it sure beats the measly $5 per month I’ve been making from eHow.

The really cool thing about September is I got a great idea for my next online project.  I’ll explain it in a later post.  The important thing is that I wanted to buy a tool to help me do research for this new project.  The tool is called Market Samurai and it sells for $97.  I paid for this tool from my article money from Demand Studios.  Demand Studios paid into my PayPal account, and I used PayPal to buy Market Samurai.  I did not have to spend any of the money I earn from my regular job to buy this tool. This is really powerful!  Now there’s no excuse to avoid pursuing new projects.  If I need something that has a hefty up-front price, I’ll just write some articles and pay for it without ever touching my bank account!  I think I have stumbled onto a great technique and I plan to use it for all my expenses for this next project.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will thoroughly evaluate my year-long writing experiment.  I can’t believe it’s over!

My goal for this month is simple: earn $100 from Demand Studios.  All I have to do is write seven articles-worth $15 each-and I will surpass $100.  Believe . . . → Read More: September Plans]]> September is the last month of my writing experiment!  I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a year already.  It seems like time keeps flying faster and faster.

My goal for this month is simple: earn $100 from Demand Studios.  All I have to do is write seven articles-worth $15 each-and I will surpass $100.  Believe it or not, I don’t think it will be easy.  I’m going to have a busy month as it is: deadlines at work, travel, and family visits.  I think a measly seven articles will actually be challenging, but not impossible.

A hundred dollars isn’t much.  It’s not like I can quit my job now and live off my writing.  But seeing my PayPal account grow is going to excite me and make me want to keep writing.  A hundred bucks in one month, after 11 months of earning very little, is going to end this writing experiment with a bang!

At the end of the month I’ll think long and hard about this experiment and post an evaluation of the year’s efforts and results.  Stay tuned!

Writing for Demand Studios is much more structured than I am used . . . → Read More: August Results]]> I did not finish my goals for August, but I wouldn’t call this month a failure.  I began writing eHow articles for Demand Studios, which is huge community of freelance writers.  I was accepted to Demand Studios automatically because I had already written for eHow.

Writing for Demand Studios is much more structured than I am used to.  The studio requires writers to follow style guides and list sources.  All articles are submitted to an editor for review.  The editor can approve, reject, or ask you to rewrite your article.  It’s a lot more work than it used to be to create an eHow article.  I think the extra work is good, though, because it will force me to write well and I’ll learn a lot from the editors.

The studio has a list of thousands of titles you can claim.  I searched within their computer category and found several articles I could write.  Each article that is accepted earns a flat fee of $15.  There are some articles that follow the old model of revenue sharing, but the selection is more limited.  That obviously makes good business sense for Demand Studios: they would rather pay someone $15 one time for an article that could possibly earn hundreds for the studio over the long term.  I’ll probably try to write more revenue sharing articles because I think they’re the better deal for the writer over the long term.

I wrote one article so far and started a second.  My first article was accepted and I was so excited to earn my fifteen bucks!  The article took about 2 hours to write, so I only earned a measly $7.50 an hour.  But it’s still cool because it’s extra money and I didn’t have to wait months to see earnings like I did with my other eHow articles.  Also, this instant payment is giving me an excitement about writing I haven’t felt in a long time.  Seeing my PayPal account grow is just the motivation I need to get me back into the writing mood!

I don’t think I’ll stick with this arrangement long term, because it’s not a realistic way to earn a living.  Even if I could write 10 articles a day, I’d still make far less money than I currently make at my day job.  But it’s nice to know that I can knock out a couple articles whenever I want to earn some extra bucks.  The money I earn from these articles is truly extra; my day job pays all my bills, so anything I earn here can be used as play money, put back into my business plans, saved for travel, or whatever!  I’m looking forward to writing more articles and earning a few bucks while I figure out my long-term writing plans.

I have still been (barely) keeping up with my newsletter about achieving goals.  I have received a lot . . . → Read More: August Goals]]> In the past couple months my writing pursuits have stagnated.  I worked a lot, traveled a lot, and was often tempted by fun distractions from everyday life.  Now I feel like I finally have some motivation to write again.

I have still been (barely) keeping up with my newsletter about achieving goals.  I have received a lot of positive feedback from subscribers that motivates me to keep writing, week after week.  Now I have decided to try to get ahead by writing several newsletters in advance.  For the month of August, I want to write eight newsletters – two each weekend.  This will give me several newsletters stored in reserve in case I neglect to write some weekends.

I signed up for a six-week online writing course in July, which ends this week.  I have done none of the reading or assignments!  I have printed them all, though, so that I can go back and do the work later.  I won’t have the benefit of a teacher to answer questions, but I can still learn much from the material.  The title of the class is Introduction to Internet Writing Markets, which is just what I need.  I plan to do half of the assignments in August and the other half in September – about one or two per weekend.

I’m going to try much harder to set realistic goals from here on out.  I have come to accept that I have a stressful job and a hectic life, so it’s OK – and probably necessary – to pursue my writing and other goals at what feels like a snail’s pace.  I really want to avoid recurrences of the current burn out that has halted me for over two months.

It’s good to be back.

I thought that . . . → Read More: May Results]]> May has been a disappointing month as far as my eBook is concerned.  I had over two thousand visitors from Google ads and 0 sales from them.  The only two sales I made were from newsletter subscribers, giving me a grand total of $10 of earnings.

• Advertising dollars spent in May: $300.00
• Revenue earned: $10.00
• Balance: ($-290.00)

I thought that writing an eBook would be the magic ticket and that writing articles for eHow was a waste of time.  But my eBook is not making money, while eHow continues to pay me about $5 per month.  Actually, this month’s eHow earnings went up to $6.36, which is the highest ever.  So maybe I’m going about this all wrong.  It might actually be easier to make money by starting with an established web site like eHow.

I’m going to stop advertising my eBook on Google Adwords until I figure out what to do, because obviously my advertising money is going straight down the drain.  I might need a better sales pitch, a lower price, better marketing, or something as simple as a different color scheme on my web site.  Who knows?  Or maybe I should just move on to a new project.  I have a lot of thinking to do before I decide my next move.

I sure hope I can improve the outlook of this project or have better luck with the next one!

My eBook, How to Achieve Any Goal, is not selling as well as I’d hoped.  I have only sold . . . → Read More: Book Performance at May Midpoint]]> Today is the half-way point through the month of May, and I can’t believe it.  This month is flying by!  It has been an exciting month because I turned 26 and went on a cruise to the Bahamas!

My eBook, How to Achieve Any Goal, is not selling as well as I’d hoped.  I have only sold two copies so far, and these were discounted copies to newsletter subscribers.  I have not sold any full-price copies to visitors who found my site from Google Adwords, which means I have a lot of advertising money going down the drain right now.

• Advertising dollars spent from May 1-15: $142.20
• Revenue earned: $10.00
• Balance: ($-132.20)

I am definitely grateful for my two sales, though!  I have also had several of my newsletter subscribers express interest, but some are unable to purchase the book because they don’t have credit cards.  So I am looking for other payment methods and for better ways to market the book.  I will be posting more to the blog when I figure out what to do.  Stay tuned!

My eBook is done!  Hooray! Go to accomplishingyourgoals.com to check it out!

I worked very hard in the month of April to finish this book and get it online.  It has been online for a couple days now and I haven’t seen any sales, but I know it will take time.  . . . → Read More: April Results and May Plans]]> April Results

How to Achieve Any Goal

My eBook is done!  Hooray! Go to accomplishingyourgoals.com to check it out!

I worked very hard in the month of April to finish this book and get it online.  It has been online for a couple days now and I haven’t seen any sales, but I know it will take time.  I am anxiously awaiting the time when I sign into Paypal and see my first sale.  I’m really excited to see if this eBook experiment is going to work!

The only tasks I didn’t finish were optimizing my sales page and creating a multivariate test in Google Optimizer.  Right now my sales page is pretty bland, which is certainly why I haven’t sold anything yet.  So I’ll work on these things in May.

May Plans

Right now I am exhausted.  I’ve been sacrificing sleep and working all day, every weekend day to finish my book.  I definitely put too much on my plate in April and it just wasn’t much fun.  I need to make time to relax and get a better balance back in my life.

So in May I am going to relax my writing.  I’m not going to make any writing goals or start a new eBook or anything like that.  I’m just going to tweak my sales page and monitor the progress of this eBook.  I’m going to record statistics like visits per day, advertising dollars spent per day, sales per day, conversion rate, etc.  I’m going to track all this stuff in a spreadsheet and each week I’ll post the stats to this blog for people who are curious about the results.  I don’t have anything else planned, but I might write some other blog posts if I feel up to it.

Toward the end of May, I’ll use the statistics I gathered to plan changes to my web site and advertising to try and increase my conversion rate.  In June I’ll implement these changes and possibly start a new eBook!

I’m really looking forward to seeing how well my eBook sells in May, and I hope you are too.  Stay tuned!

I rewrote the . . . → Read More: Writing a Disclaimer]]> Writing a disclaimer has been the most worrisome aspect of writing my eBook.  I am totally paranoid about being sued!  I scrapped together bits and pieces of other peoples’ disclaimers and then had an intellectual property lawyer review it.  It turns out the lawyer was not worth the time and money.

I rewrote the disclaimer again and went with my gut feeling.  I feel like this is one of those things you just have to figure out on your own, because that’s all I could do.  But here’s my advice for anyone out there writing their own disclaimer:

• Check out books from the library and use one of their disclaimers.  Look at the disclaimers in “Idiot’s Guide” books, “Dummies” books, investment books, and self-help books.  I pieced together a few things from multiple books to make my disclaimer.  I figure if these disclaimers are good enough for these big publishers, they’re good enough for me.
• Selling a book or product is a business risk. If you sell anything, there will always be a risk of a lawsuit against you.  You have to do what you can to mitigate this risk and then decide if you accept it or not.  This is where I had to go with my gut feeling.  I feel that my risk is low enough to accept it.
• To mitigate the risk for my eBook, I decided to put the disclaimer on my web site in addition to the front of the book.  Customers must check a checkbox to agree to the terms before they can purchase my book.  Lots of huge corporations use that technique on their web sites, so it should be good enough for me, too.
• Have a lawyer review your disclaimer if you want to get a warm fuzzy feeling.  However, make sure you get the right kind of lawyer and be aware that lawyers cannot eliminate the risk.  At the end of the line you have to decide if you accept the risk or not.
• If your product does well and starts making good money, consider starting a business for it.  This is what I plan to do in the near future if my eBook does well.  Then any lawsuits will be against the business and not you.  If you get sued and lose, your business might go bankrupt, but at least they can’t take your personal savings account, house, car, etc.

Again, I can’t stress enough that lawsuits are just a risk you are going to have to accept if you want to sell a product.  I was very paranoid about it, even after seeing a lawyer.  But I finally just went with my gut feelings, wrote my own disclaimer, and I’m going for it.  We’ll see what happens.

Disclaimer: The above advice contains the opinions and ideas of its author.  It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subject matter covered.  It is written with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering professional services in this post.  If the reader requires personal assistance or advice, a competent professional should be consulted.  The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose.