A Writer's Journey - Refocusing

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a Hub, so today I thought I would let anyone who may be interested why. It isn’t because I have given up my dreams of being a writer, in fact, those dreams are alive and well, and last month I actually made enough money to be able to pay the car insurance. Not a big amount I assure you, but the way the economy continues to be, a big help. So what have I been doing you ask? How did I mange to do this?

When I first began my writing journey in earnest, I was able to access a computer and the internet from where I worked. For the last year, that is no longer the case, therefore I have had to make some decisions on where and what I write. If you have read any of my previous Hubs on writing, you know I do this because I enjoy it, but also to make enough money at it to maybe one day do nothing but this. This has cause a resetting of my writing priorities.

When I was able to have access to the internet, I would write for all kinds of sites, anything I could find, the reason being the more exposure I was able to get, the better. Some of the sites I wrote for paid nothing, but I figured I could link to my blogs, etc. which would help. Some of the sites, like Hub Pages, pay by how many views you get, how many ads get clicked upon and if you have an Amazon Affiliate account, if someone clicks on an Amazon link and/or buys something. Then there are sites out there which pay upfront pay, a set amount per article accepted and some will also pay extra for views.

The first two methods, the ones based upon views, can pay decent money, but, and it can be a big but, you have to have the views. How do you get views? There are three main ways:

• · Write a lot. For a site like Hub Pages, one article a day would be good, certainly at least three a week. The more you write the more exposure you get, and the more followers you should receive.
• · Write quality material. Quality can mean different things to different people, but for this let me just say, write stuff people want to read. For different sites, this can mean different things. Some sites you might do well with informal, chatty articles, others it’s hard news and some it’s articles which generate controversy (Note: I am not saying to make things up to create controversy). Again, you need views, so if you pay attention your readers will tell you what they want. Listen to them.
• Finally, comment, comment and then comment some more. When someone comments on something you write, answer it, and then, if they also write somewhere, for instance they are a Hubber as well, go to their Hub and comment on theirs. I could write a whole Hub on commenting and what you should do or not do, (maybe I will soon) but again the idea is to get people to read your articles, so that should give you some idea as to how to comment. Using social media is part of this as well.

These three activities all require one thing, time. I was very surprised how much time it takes to be an effective commenter for instance, saying the right things in the right way in order to get people to read my stuff. I mentioned trying to write three Hubs a week, that takes time as well, if you want to do it right, quality, etc. you need to research, find links, and all that time consuming stuff. If you multiply this by five, for five different sites, or even more, pretty soon you are spending a lot of time on the internet.

When I could no longer use the internet at work (I have a job which sometimes incurs a lot of down time which is when I would do this) I now lost the ability to read, link and comment, which affected my views and hence, income. Like any business, time is money and you need to concentrate first on what is paying the bills.

When I no longer had the ability to get online from work, I needed to rethink my writing. While I still had the down time, in fact even more, I didn’t have the time to spend at home online, significant others tend to frown on being ignored and rightfully so. When writing for four or five sites which paid by views, I no longer had the time to comment, answer comments and read and comment on other sites, which affected my views. I needed a solution.

First, as I have written before, I needed to reaffirm that I was committed to writing, and if I was going to do it, I would have to figure some way to find the time, and tossing out the girlfriend wasn’t an option. I decided that I would get up an hour earlier each day, ignore emails and comments, and just look for ideas of things to write about. I would scan the news site, see a interesting possibility, I would the copy and paste articles and information to write about into my word processing program, and then later I could read them at my leisure. Then I could write them at work, and upload them later.

This worked okay but I still couldn’t comment and share like I would like, so that is when I had to make another decision, where to submit my work. This is where the upfront payment sites came in. I came to the conclusion that it would be better to get a guaranteed payment, (something like Yahoo Contributor network pays $8) and know it was there than to maybe get a few dollars here and there on other sites, if I didn’t have the time to generate the views. Spending my time writing for these sites, I found that I actually made more money per hour writing with almost no time spent commenting (which I do miss). If you are lucky, you can also get paid both upfront and then make extra money on your views as well, which I look at as a bonus.

Does this mean I won’t write for sites like Hub Pages? Not at all. When I get the time, like now, I still enjoy writing for them. The beauty of Hub Pages, as opposed to the upfront payment sites, is you have the ability here to pretty much write whatever you like. Something like Yahoo for example, only lets you stay in your particular field, for example I write news commentary. Here, I can write opinion, reports, humor (or try anyway) or stuff like this. This is what attracted me to Hub Pages in the first place. The comments when you get them and the number of views lets you know what works and what doesn’t, something you don’t always get at other sites.

I guess the point of this lengthy Hub, is that sometimes you need to make decisions on what you want to accomplish. This might mean refocusing on where and what you write. It might mean sacrificing your spare time. But if you really want to write, and make money at it, this, like any other career really is what you need to do. It’s easy to give up, but just like anything else, if writing is your passion, you’ll do what you need to do to reach your goals.