There's a lot that can be said about writing to earn money. It is something I have been doing for the past two years successfully online and I know make my full-time income from writing. But I certainly didn't start out that way and the way I make money from my writing isn't in the way that I expected it to be.
I've spent most of my life as an amateur writer and it always served me well at school, knowing I could write great papers for top marks. In college, I also worked for a local paper as a stringer, writing for $25 per article. Of course, I usually had to spend a few hours at a boring town meeting, only to come back to the newsroom and spend an hour or two working on an article that was no more than 400-500 words. But it was kind of cool for the time and it got me a byline. I think my mom still has all of those articles I wrote.
About 10 years ago I also had a few memoir pieces published, some racy stuff under an entirely different name. Then I've spent a lot of time writing blogs, usually posting about my favorite tv shows, reviews of the latest movies and that sort of thing. I also wrote some fiction on the side, but I never seriously thought about getting it published because the idea of writing an entire novel just never appealed to me all that much.
I was writing because it was fun. The idea of making money while doing it certainly interested me, but it wasn't until I discovered affiliate marketing and article marketing that I realized I could turn my skills as a wordsmith into an actual career. And that's what I've done. The odd thing is I'm not paid to write, as such, but I do write to earn money. Over the next few posts, hopefully I can talk clearly about that idea so it makes sense.
