New Year Writing Resolutions

Now that we’ve entered a New Year many people are working on their New Year writing resolutions.

I know they are because I’ve been selling more writing ebooks than usual recently.

And from all the talk online it seems that most writers are trying to earn more money from their writing this year, and some even have a set amount they’re working towards.

I have done the same thing many times.

But the problem is that you can’t actually be sure of how much money you’re going to earn.

So what I do is have an idea of how much I want to earn and then I look at how I’m going to do it.

- What books am I going to write?

- How will I market them?

- How many blog posts will I write?

- How will I increase my blog and website traffic?

- What am I going to do to get more subscribers?

These are the things I can control. It’s up to me how much I write and how I market things. But I have no real control over my exact income.

So I make a plan of what I’m going to do and I stick to it.

And then the following year I look back over what I did, what worked and what didn’t and then I make a new plan to do even better next year.

Making plans for things that I can control (like writing) works better than making plans for things I can’t control (like exact income amounts).

And as long as I’m working my plan, I’m moving forward towards my financial goal.

How about you?

What are your writing and marketing plans for the next 12 months?

What will you be doing differently and doing more of?

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Want to get more visitors to your blog AND make more money this year?

Read my latest article, 3 Free And Simple Ways to Market Your Blog.

How to Earn Money Online Before You Go To Bed Tonight

If you want to earn money from everything you write, then there MUST be a way for you to be able to do that.

What I mean is that if you write a blog post, how will you earn money from it?

One of the easiest and quickest ways is through PPC advertising.

But for this to work well, your blog posts need to be as Search Engine Optimised as possible.

This means that what you write needs to be not only helpful to your readers, but it needs to contain the correct keywords so that the ads displayed on your blog page are appropriate for your readers too.

PPC ads work on algorithms so the software needs to know what your articles are about, so a quick bit of keyword research can make a huge difference.

And the right content with the best keywords can easily result in people clicking on your ads straight away.

And you may think that earning a dollar or two a day for clicks on your ads isn’t much, but once you have a hundred or more pages of content online, each containing several ads, the revenue can surprise you.

There are writers who do this for a living.

They never waste time writing something that doesn’t have an opportunity for them to earn money.

The first time I ever put PPC ads on my website, I earned money from them the same day.

And this is only one small way to earn money as an online writer.

The Wealthy Writer - How to Earn $100K+/Year Writing For the Internet

http://ruthiswriting.com/links/wealthywriter.html

3 Ways to Earn Money From 5 Minutes Writing

Making money from writing doesn’t have to take a long time. You don’t have to sit and write a whole book.

When I first started out trying to earn money from my writing, I tried smaller projects, ones that only took 5 minutes to write.

Not only were they quick to do but they paid faster as well.

The 3 easiest five-minute projects (IMHO) are:

1. Jokes. Some magazines, like Readers’ Digest, regularly publish jokes. And best of all they pay really well - up to $100 per joke.


2. Movie Pitches. If you have a great idea for a movie but don’t know how to write a script, you can pitch your idea to movie producers. Most companies option ideas for up to $100K or more.


3. Readers’ Letters. Magazines and other publications love to fill up space with readers’ letters, with some of these only being one for two sentences. Yet they pay up to $100 - or sometimes more. You can even receive prizes too if yours is the ‘Letter of the Week.’

So go to your local library and browse the magazines or do it at your local newsagent store.

You’ll be surprised just how many magazines there are and how many writing opportunities they contain.

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Earn Money From Your Writing Fast

From 5 Minute Writing Projects to Full Feature Articles and Short Stories.

Find out what to write how to write it and where to send it.

Quick Cash Writing

How Much Money Can You Earn From Your Writing in a Year?

How much money do writers earn?
How can I earn money as a writer?
How much money can I make as a writer?

These are questions that I get asked all the time.

And do you want to know the answer?

It all depends on one thing - YOU.

It depends on how well you write, what you write and how much you write.

So someone who writes useless blog posts once a month isn’t going to make as much  money as someone who writes in depth, weekly blog posts that get read by hundreds of thousands of followers.

But now is the best time to become the successful writer you’ve always wanted to be - as long as you’re prepared to work at it.

This is the time of year when everyone is thinking about plans for the New Year.

And you can do it too by making a 12 month writing plan and thinking about these 3 things:

How much can you realistically write in 12 months? You’ll be surprised just how much is possible. for instance, writing for just one or two hours a day is enough to write a 50,000 word book a month.

What will you write? do you want to write ebooks? Novels? Or do you want to be a blogger? A scriptwriter? A copywriter?

How much will you need to write to earn enough money? This is where it becomes a bit of a guessing game, but it is possible to come up with a winning strategy of how much money you need to earn plus how you’re going to do it (it’s math, people).

In the end we’re all different so you need to come up with your own writing plan.

But the advice I can give you is that you shouldn’t wait till next year.

Make your plan now and start writing.

Don’t wait till the New Year.

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Want to learn more about writing and earning money?

Read my latest article How Can One Year of Writing Be Too Much?

Writing Forums. Helpful or Not?

Lately I’ve been taking somewhat of an interest in writing forums.

Why?

Because they’re regularly touted as one of the best places for writers to hang out and learn their craft.

Many years ago, while I was quite new to being a writer (but I was already earning a decent income from it), I joined a couple of writing forums.

What I found was that most of the people on these forums weren’t writers at all.

Most were wannabes who had never (and probably never would) write anything publishable at all.

Quite a few others were just trolls.

It only took me a few weeks to realise what was going on and get the hell out of there.

But lately I wondered if anything had changed.

So I took a look around and scanned through a few forums looking at the threads and all the responses.

And you know what?

Nothing had changed.

No matter where I looked, each forum was dominated by people either responding to questions with useless advice because they weren’t professional writers and so had no clue what they were talking about, or they were nasty trolls just hanging around trying to upset people.

But do you know what amazed me the most?

It was how much time these people were spending on these forums.

It seemed that they spent hours every day posting new topics, answering questions, and getting into arguments.

There were even people who seemed to be on the forums 24/7 and had tens of thousands of posts and comments and thousands of followers.

One poster actually had well over 67,000 posts that he’d uploaded over his 10 year membership which averaged out at over 18 posts a day. Imagine that! Posting 18 times a day - or more -  to the same forum for 10 years.

And the funny thing about all this was that the threads that received the most responses were the ones where people were asking about how to earn money from writing.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I found this hilarious because how can anyone who spends most of their time on free forums dishing out advice about how to make money from writing, actually have the time to make money from writing?

The irony just has me in stitches because let’s face it, anyone making money from writing is writing and getting their work published, not hanging around writing forums. Have you ever heard a successful writer saying how they spent hours and hours every day on writing forums and it helped get them to where they are today?

No doubt there will be some who think that writing forums are great and that’s why they’re always on them. But it’s also the reason why they’re not successful writers.

Successful writers are busy writing.

My advice to anyone who wants to earn money from their writing is to “Just Do It,” as the Nike slogan says.

Writing time is best spent writing and if you don’t know where to start or what to write next, try a writing course like Quick Cash Writing that gets you earning money from your writing  fast.

Or look at my Writing Markets page for new places for writing submissions.

Or how about downloading How to Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less so that you can get to work straight away writing your next best seller.

Writing is work, not a hobby.

No writing = no publishing = no money.

So don’t spend your time hanging out on forums all day.

Find a way to start work quickly and get down to some serious writing.

Just Do It.

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Find Inspiration From The Writing Practises Of Best Selling Author Roald Dahl In My Latest Article For Writers.

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3 Reasons I Sell More Books With Email

Selling books can sometimes be harder than writing them.

I love to sit and write books, to be 100% focused on my work and write thousands of words a day.

And as a novelist, Dean Wesley Smith so eloquenty put it, "Sitting alone in a room and making shit up isn't work. Sorry. It's play."

But after the writing comes the marketing.

And because I'm a writer, marketing my books by writing emails, isn't difficult.

All it takes is more writing.

But why email?

There are other ways like online marketing, social media and press releases (just to name a few), and these should all be done too.

But email marketing is more personal because you're writing to people who already know you.

And email heps me to do 3 other things.

1. I can announce that my books before I even finish writing them.

2. Announcing books early gathers interested readers long before publication.

3. Books sales are immediate because people are already waiting to buy them.

If you're serious about making money from writing books, using email can not only hlep increase sales, but help you to get more sales faster.

Readers want to know when your next book is going to be published, and email can help.

You can read my latest article about How to Sell More Books With Email over at my website. 

And click on the images on this page and download 2 free ebooks to learn more.

Earning Money As A Writer

"How much money do writers earn?"

This is a question I get asked a lot.

And I always give the same answer. "I don't know. How much do you earn?"

It's funny how people don't care about asking me how much I earn but don't want to talk about their own income. Hmmm...

Anyway, I can't answer that question even if I wanted to because different writers earn different amounts of income.

When I first quit my job to write full time I was a bit worried about tax and other income related things and I had to get an accountant - and pay her!

This was scary at first because I didn't understand all the tax laws but it turned out that I didn't have to because that is what I pay my accountant for.

But when I first started writing I didn't worry about the money side of it because I was still working at my job.

It wasn't until I quit working that I went to see an accountant who explained everything to me.

All I had to do was keep an Excel spreadsheet of my income from all my different books and other sources, and of all my expenditures, and she did the rest.

At first, it's scary because writing income isn't regular.

But it does arrive in my bank account several times a month and I've learnt not think that I can spend a lot of money just because I earned it.

I have to make it last because the amounts can be so different.

And earning money as a writer means that I have to write every day, 5 days a week, and sometimes more.

But it's worth it.

And even though the money isn't as steady as having an income from a paid job, I do get regular payments every month from places like Amazon.

So I guess in a way it is a steady income.

But I still don't know how much money other writers make.

So don't ask me.

You Won't Make Money From Writing If You Don't Get On With It

One of the questions I get asked the most is how do I earn money from writing?

And I keep giving the same answer.

I write.

You see that's the big secret about a writing income. You have to actually do the writing. Not just once or twice. But all the time. Every day.

But there are some people who don't have a clue where to start. And so they don't.

There are others who have a multitude of excuses as to why they can't earn money from writing - no time (always the favourite), have kids, have a job, far too busy already, don't have any spare time to write, and on and on it goes.

I say, go tell your excuses to Stephen Hawkingand see how much sympathy HE has for you. He writes books all the time despite his inability to move. So what's your excuse for not writing?

How and Where to Start

Asking the right questions can help you get started because it helps to know what you want so that you can figure out how to get it.

So if you're not writing enough, or your not writing at all, ask yourself these 3 questions:

Making Money From Writing Fast

Lately I've been delving into a bit of freelance writing for magazines.

I went to the local library, looked through a few magazines and found places to submit short fiction and article ideas (magazines usually only want an article outline to begin with but they want the complete fiction story upfront).

And I'd forgotten how much fun this can be. Browsing magazine articles and stories, looking up their submission guidelines online (gotta get it right or they're not interested), looking at what they're currently looking for and then planning my submission attack.

It was entertaining to see the  letters to the editor, for which some of the magazines pay quite a high price and some even offer a prize for each letter published and the prizes are worth several hundred dollars each.

I love sending in small letters like that (some as small as just a few words) because they pay so much for so little. There was one magazine that paid $100 for an amusing short submission and $150 if you included a photo. Yay!

I also found magazines looking for short tips and small articles of less than 500 words.

These are the types of freelance writing gigs that can pay out fast, and for not much work.

Another thing that's handy to do is look at how often the magazines are published. The weekly ones need much more content than their quarterly cousins. And they usually want less substantial information in their articles too which makes writing them so much easier and quicker.

Unlike book writing, freelance writing doesn't bring in an ongoing, passive income. But it is nice to have a cash boost (or several cash boosts depending on how many items you submit your work).

What I usually recommend if you want to earn money this way is to try and make 30 submissions in 30 days. You can then wait 30 days to see if you get any "bites" because if you do, you'll need the time to write the articles that the editors are interested in. But during the 30 days, you can be looking for more markets for your next 30 submissions.

If you want to find freelance writing markets, I have a whole list you can browse for free at http://writeaholics.net/writingmarkets.html.

You can also use the Writers & Artists Year Book to find thousands of writing markets. You can buy the book or read it at your local library.  It's usually in the reference section so you can't borrow it, or at least that's how it is at my library. It's such a thick book and contains a huge amount of markets, and it's all categorised so you can quickly search for whatever area of expertise you're in.

It also contains articles and how-to guidance on writing for newspapers, magazines, scripts for film, radio and TV, plus advice on writing and submitting plays, poetry, non-fiction and fiction of all genres. It's a book I usually buy every year because it's really worth the investment.

I am also a member of American Consumer Opinion website where I get paid to take surveys (you don't have to live in the USA to join). Not all of these survey companies are legitimate but so far (and I've been associated with them for several years now) this one is. You can also get asked to "test-drive" products for them too.

So if you're feeling inspired to write and you want to earn a bit of "quick cash" from your writing, freelance writing for magazines (and filling out surveys) may be just what you need.

I find that once I start looking, it really motivates me to write and start submitting.

And I hope it works that way for you too.

How to Control Your Writing Income

One of the problems with being a writer is that you can never be sure of your income.

When you’re employed you receive a regular weekly or monthly income, but being a writer is so different to that.

Every year I start out with goals of how much money I want to earn from my writing and then I have to figure out how I’m going to do it.

Some things I do are successful and I can hit my income target, and other things turn out not so great or maybe even just mediocre.

Then I read a really fascinating article written by freelance writer, Mridu Khullar Relph at http://www.mridukhullar.com/setting-yearly-goals called “Setting Yearly Goals…In November.”

In this article she talks about how it’s not possible to always hit yearly financial goals, because writers don't have complete control over that.

But we can hit yearly writing goals, or as Mridu calls it, production goals.

She then sets down what her writing goals are (books, blog posts, freelance writing work, etc), breaks it down into how much writing she needs to do to achieve it, and then divides it by how many writing days she has in a year (365 days minus 2 weeks holiday, minus 2 weeks sick days minus weekends, etc) and from there gets a really “do-able” daily word count.

It’s great to read how she breaks it all down and shows you that you don’t need to work full-time to earn a full-time income as a writer.

How to Start an Online Business Simply and Free

There are many people who now have blogs and earn income from them.

Many also earn all their income from their blogs or websites.

Earning money online is a dream come true for a lot of people yet few seem to actually do it.

So what holds people back?

It's usually fear. Either fear of failing or even, fear of succeeding.

So what's the simplest way to set up a blog?

And how can you do it for free?

And how can you make money from it?

Setting up a money-making blog or website

If you want to set up your own online business, don't try to get it right. Just get it going.

Trying to be perfect will prevent you from getting out of the proverbial starting gate.

My first ever website for writers was terrible. I don't know how I made money from it but I did.

On reflection, I think that the only reason I made money was because I got the website going. I didn't procrastinate, I just wanted to do it. So I found out how and just did it.

Writers need websites (or blogs) as a place to sell their books. Having a website and being able to use it to market your books really helps. It's also a place where you can earn a residual income while you write.

So if you want to get started, do it now. Don't wait for a better time (there's no such thing) or wait till you can get it perfect. Just get it going.

If you want to do it for free,  that's OK too. This blog that you're reading is a free blog from Google. It's called Blogger.

Many popular website are run on Blogger including Down to Earth and Zero Waste Home (ZWH has its own domain name but it is still run on Blogger which you can see at the bottom). The owner of the Down To Earth blog is now an author of several books and was offered several book deals after a publishing company saw her blog and liked her style of writing.

Just Google Blogger to get going now and you can have your blog up and running in minutes. It's the easiest free blogging software I've ever found.

And if you want to publish your books quickly then set up a publishing account with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing at http://kdp.amazon.com. It's free and you can sell your ebooks all over the world through every Amazon website.

You can also use Amazon's free print publishing service called Create Space. Your book files are uploaded to the Amazon website and printed and shipped when ordered.

Just keep everything simple when you get started online and you can grow your writing and publishing business from there.

Just remember that you don't have to get it right, you just have to get it going.

And after that, anything can (and will) happen.

Living The Laptop Lifestyle - How to Start and Grow A Profitable Online Business So You Can Quit Your Job

Click the image below to find out  more.

Are You Wasting Your Time Blogging When You Should Be Writing Books?

When most writers start blogging their strategy is usually to 'throw content up on the blog and see what sticks'.

We all start out that way, even I used to do it.

I didn't really understand back then how my content could earn me my full-time income. I only saw what I was doing as a simple equation:

Blog Visitors = Income

And this is the same for many people who want to make money from blogging.

It's so easy to think that your main goal is to write huge amounts of content to drive more people (traffic) to your blog.

And this type of thinking used to be regularly encouraged online when all the so-called “blogging gurus" were bragging about how rich they were from their advertising income.

This created a blogging boom because everyone began to think that if they had a blog and wrote a huge amount of content, they'd get rich too.

Unfortunately the thing that wasn't talked about was how most people earned little or no income from their blog, and THAT’S still the same today.

The real truth is that if you want to make a lot money from blog advertising, then you need to get millions of visitors to your site.

And that's just not not going to happen for most people.

Advertising requires unrealistic amounts of blog traffic. Not only that but the very nature of online advertising is that the ads are there to take people away from your site, which is not a good business strategy at all.

So if you really want to earn all your income from your writing, don’t just use a blog as a way to earn money from advertising. Use a blog to sell your books.

You can still use your blog as a place to post great content AND you can have a few ads on there for extra income if you want to (it's more profitable to have visitors leave by clicking an ad than clicking their back button), but instead of leading people to the ads that will take them away from your site, use your content to lead people to your books.

You also need to create a relationship with your readers by setting up an email list so that you can keep in touch with them and let them know about every book you write, or tell them about it while you’re still writing to create ongoing interest.

So the flow of what happens on your blog isn’t that your content attracts attention which leads people to click an ad and buy a product from someone else. The flow is to use your content to attract attention which leads people to read your content and then sign up to you email list, buy books from you and become a regular reader.

This creates a whole community of loyal readers who love your work and want to buy more books from you.

This will lead to you earning more money selling books than earning advertising fees and not only that, the greatest thing is that you don’t need to constantly try and get millions of visitors to your site in order to earn a decent income.

You can relax into your book writing without the worry of how many people are or aren’t visiting  your blog.

And once you realise what a far better business model this is, it becomes a whole lot easier (and more fun) to make money writing and selling your own books, because you don’t have to attract a huge amount of people to your books, only the right people, those who want your books and are eager to read what you write.

This leaves you free to get back to the writing you should be doing instead of spending all your time writing free online content.

And if you want to learn more about blogging and making money on line from your writing, you can always download Living The Laptop Lifestyle.

How to Generate More Income From Fiction Writing

Self publishing has been especially great for fiction writers because it used to be difficult to get fiction books published.

Non-fiction writers used to fair better because plenty of people were willing to buy PDF ebooks that could be downloaded from the internet. But fiction readers always wanted physical books. Sadly for most authors, THAT option was too expensive.

But now publishing fiction is easy because not only can you published all your own novels for free (and do it quickly), but also fiction readers are now happy to download and read novels on their smart phones and other reading devices.

This has freed up fiction authors to earn a living writing their books.

But how can you earn even more money from fiction writing?

One of the first millionaire self published fiction authors was John Locke. He wrote a series of novels but struggled to publish them.

Then he discovered Kindle publishing and not only did he publish all his novels as digital books, but he made so much money that he also wrote and published his best selling non-fiction ebook, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!  And he sold over 1 million of that ebook even faster.

So what was his secret?

His novels weren’t better than anyone else's, in fact they are just OK to read IMHO.

But what he did differently than most fiction writers is that he published a whole series of novels.

So when one of his readers finished the first book they were eager to read the next, and so on, and so on.

And that’s the real secret to success through fiction publishing. You need to write and publish a whole series of novels instead of just publishing one and sitting back and expecting to make a fortune.

But having said that, the first caveat here is to make sure that each of your novels, not only leads the readers through an on-going story, but each novel must also stand alone. There can be no open endings.

It’s just like the Harry Potter novels. Each book is a complete story so even if you only read one of them, you can follow what’s happening and understand who all the characters are. But every subsequent book builds on what happened in the previous books.

Another caveat, is to make sure that the readers, when buying one of your books, knows that it is part of a series.

I know of one author who published a series of novels but didn’t make it clear on the cover. So when readers found out that there were more books to read they felt cheated because they thought  each book was a separate story.

The author changed her book covers to make it clear that it was a series, but the damage was already done because of the unfavourable reviews being posted online.

And if you want to write non-fiction you can also write and publish a series of ebooks by expanding your subject and breaking it down into separate ebooks instead of separate chapters.

So if you want to sell more novels, think about writing a series to keep your readers hooked and wanting more.

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Self Publish Worldwide

Finding Writing Markets and Finding Ideas

Freelance writing for magazines can be a great way to earn money if you do it consistently.

$200 for an article plus $100 for a tip and $50 for a joke can soon all add up to a decent income.

But first of all you have to find enough markets.

This is all part of the process and can be even more helpful than you realise because looking for freelance markets can also trigger great ideas for other writing projects whether it’s an idea for an article for a magazine or an online article for your own website or for your next ebook.

Once you start looking you'll start having idea overload, or at least that’s how it always works for me.

Whenever I start looking, the ideas never stop coming.

So if you’re stuck for a few new writing ideas, try searching through some magazines for writing opportunities and see what great ideas they can spark.

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Don’t suffer from writer’s block ever again.

Download Goodbye Writer’s Block today.

http://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/WB.html

My Recent Income From Book Sales

I get asked a lot about how much money I earn from my writing, but it's not something I like to talk about.

I always think that if I had a regular 9 to 5 job no one would ask me how much I earn but writers get asked about this often.

In a way I can understand why people want to know.

There's much talk about how it's possible to earn a really good income as a writer and apart from asking successful writers, there's no way to find out.

For regular careers there's a minimum wage and average income that anyone can look up. But writers are different because we're not paid by the hour. It's the same for musicians and artists. None of them earn a 'standard' income because there is no standard income for creative careers.

But having said all that, just to show that it is possible to earn a good income as a writer, I'll tell you about part of a conversation I had with my bookkeeper just a few days ago.

He rang to ask me a few questions about my most recent income. I'd sent him all the paperwork but he still had a couple of questions.

Then he asked me another question.

He said, "Do you know who much money you've earned from your book sales in the last 2 weeks?"

I admitted that I had no idea. Math has never interested me much so although I know I'm making sales, I don't really track them all the time (that's what bookkeepers are for aren't they?).

So he told me.

"$5,000."

I was pleased. That's pretty good earnings from my books. I don't even have as many published as some authors.

I also make money online from affiliate sales and from advertising on my websites, so earning 5K from just my books was great.

And I'm telling your this not to brag (although some will think 5k is nothing compared to what they earn) but to show you that there is money to be made from self publishing.

And that's another thing...he was only talking about the books I self published and so that figure doesn't include my two books that I didn't publish myself, one of which is The Wealthy Writer.

So if you've ever wanted to start taking your writing seriously and earn enough money so that you can work as a writer like I do, I hope this blog post helps to inspire you to start writing, publishing and marketing more.

And I include publishing and marketing, because without these two things, you won't make any money from your writing at all.

The really good news for me though, is that I'm about to start writing many more books (they're on my schedule of work for the next few months).

So my income can only increase.

:)

No I Won't Personally Tutor You And Here Are The Reasons Why

Okay...As you must already know by now I've been doing a run of local talks about setting up websites/blogs and making money online.

I called these talks The Laptop Lifestyle, after my best selling ebook of the same name.

Since then (as well as during my run of talks) I've had quite a few emails from people asking if I do private group lessons on how to do it all.

Now, while I can understand everyone wanting to know more about this, I'll give my reasons for not doing private group lessons:

1. It takes up too much of my time.
2. I'd rather be doing the work myself than teaching others how to do it. 
3. Most people don't want to know how to do it, they want me to do it for them.

All three of these reasons are valid on their own.

I'm far too busy doing my own work to take time out to teach others.

And the reason I work online is because I enjoy working alone. As nice as it was to get out and meet lots of new people, at heart I'm a working alone kind of person.

I love to sit here every day, learn more about working online, write ebooks and courses and earn money from what I do.

And there are many people who also want to do the same. I know this because many of them were at my talks.

But the difference, is that I found that many of them don't really want to work like I do. They want someone else to do the work while they reap the benefit.

I kept pointing everyone to my Laptop Lifestyle ebook that provides everything they need to get started. I told them that working online involves getting going and learning as you go along.

Yet still I keep hearing from people saying they couldn't set up a free blog because they'd learned all about how to do it but were confused (without even starting), weren't sure how blogging software works, weren't sure how many blog posts to write to get started, wanted to know what to do if they didn't make money...and on and on the list went.

I've been repeating myself over and over about this to so many different people lately, and I'll say it again.

You don' have to get it right. You just have to get it going.

It's impossible to know everything there is to know about something before you start.

Look at learning to drive. Did you know how to do it before you started or did you get in the car and learn as you went along?

At school, did you learn your math lessons by the teacher explaining everything about math without you having to lift a finger, or did you learn by actually doing the math yourself?

And as for knowing how something works to be able to use it (like blogging software), I use electricity every day but I have no clue how it works or how to fix it when it breaks. I also don't know how computers work either, but that doesn't stop me from earning all my income from one.

So if you want to make money online from writing, blogging, affiliate marketing, advertising or any other of the hundreds of ways to do it, stop making excuses and just get it going. (This advice also applies to everything you want to do that you've never done before).

And if you don't know where to start, you can start by clicking the image below for more information.

But please don't ask me to tutor you personally.

I'm far too busy writing and living my own Laptop Lifestyle.

Money Likes Speed

“There are no speed limits on the road to excellence. We can’t be fined for speeding.” ~ David W. Johnson

Money Likes Speed is a saying I've heard over and over for the last few years.

But it's not just money that likes speed. Success (in all areas of life) likes speed too.

If you think, ponder, question, doubt, plan, meet, discuss, worry, etc, before you act, you'll never make enough money.

And it's the same with writing. Money likes writing speed too.

When you get an idea of something you want to write about, don't sit around and think about it.

Act.

If you procrastinate you'll not only lose your initial enthusiasm, you'll also think of all the reasons you shouldn't write it, plus you'll lose all your ideas.

I've heard it said that ideas are gifts. You didn't ask for them, you didn't pay for them, you don't owe anyone anything for them. They are given to you.

So don't throw away these gifts. Use them straight away before they disappear, because ideas can be lost really quickly and so easily.

People who earn a lot of money from their writing are those who act on every great idea they have.

If they get an idea for an ebook or a great article, they don't sit around and think about it for a few days or weeks. They sit down, map out an outline of what they want to write and then they get down to work.

Some of the writers who have been successful through their speed of writing are Joe Vitale (who prides himself on how fast he moves from idea to finish product), Sylvester Stallone who wrote the script for the movie Rocky in just 3 days and Isaac Asimov who wrote over 400 books in his writing life which equated to around one book a month.

What would have happened to these writers and their work if they hadn't acted fast and sat down to write every time they had a great idea? They'd be broke nobodies.

There are those who believe that because writing creates a passive income, it means you can sit around, do nothing and earn money.

On the contrary. Successful writers are always writing and they act fast when ideas come to them.

That's the secret of earning money through speed.

The money you make may come long after you've finished your writing, but the speed of writing is what makes the money come.

And what writer doesn't want to earn money?

I've been working as a writer for almost 20 years now and I always find that the more I write and publish, the more money I make.

So next time an idea hits you, act on it. Make the most of your gift (idea) and when you get another one do it all over again, and see the difference it makes to your writing income.

FYI (just in case you're invested, this article went from idea to published in 20 minutes.

Goodbye Writer's Block - How to Be A Creative Genius and Have an Abundance of Ideas PLUS the Inspiration and Motivation to Write

How To Easily Make Money Online, Even If You Don't Know How

One thing I've really enjoyed doing over the past 15+ years, is working as an online writer.

And as you know, I've recently been touring around teaching what I do.

What struck me the most was that nearly everyone who attended my classes had absolutely no clue - zilch, nada, none - about what to do or where to start.

So I helped them as much as I could in the short time I had.

And to help them even more I gave everyone a handout with an outline of what I'd be talking about plus links to useful websites to help them get started.

I also put the handout online so that I could show it on a projector screen as I worked my way through it.

The talks that I was giving are now over but I thought that because there were so many people that I met who had no idea about even the basics of making money online, there are probably even more who I haven't met who have the same problem.

So if you're someone who wants to make money online but you have nothing to sell and you don't know where to start, here is a link to my handout from my talk which was called The Laptop Lifestyle.

I hope this information helps.

http://writeaholics.net/handout.html

The Most Asked Question About Making Money Online As A Writer

I've been a bit lapse lately about posting on this blog.

For this there are two reasons.

Firstly, I've been doing other writing work and secondly I've been busy doing a run of talks at several local libraries about how I make money online.

And yes, there really should be a third reason that I could have tried harder to keep up with everything, but I was just SO busy.

The reason that I'm telling you all this is because at the talks I've been giving (and I haven't finished yet, so I'll be out on the road again next week), I talk a in quite a bit of detail about how to set up a blog, how to market it, and some of the different ways to earn an income online.

Afterwards, someone always asks me, "How do you know all this stuff? How did you learn to it it all?"

And as I answer this question, everyone seems to hold their breathe as they wait for my answer, as though  I'm about to impart some secret, mystical knowledge.

I tell them my 'secret' in one, un-mystical word.

Google.

This is my go-to place for everything I need to know.

Through my searches I've always found answers to all my questions, no matter how random or complicated they seem at first.

Sometimes I find what I'm looking for, for free.

Other times I find courses, services or products that can help me, so I buy them.

But I'm always searching, finding and investing.

I'm not afraid to invest my time or money in what I need to move my business forward.

And neither should you.

Search for what you need and then use it.

The people attending my talks (called The Laptop Lifestyle) were searching for knowledge and they found a lot of it.

You can find it too, without leaving your chair and attending one of my talks by investing in your own...

Laptop Lifestyle

What Do You Want To Write?

Let me ask you a question.

If you could earn enough money from your writing, regardless of what you were writing, what kind of writer would you be?

Would you be a novelist?

Ebook writer?

Blog writer?

Ghost writer?

Freelance writer?

Copy writer?

Screen writer?

Comedy writer?

Poet?

Review writer?

Speech writer?

Technical writer?

Article Writer?

Translator?

Or any other kind of writer.

Just imagine if you could sit and write for a few hours every day and earn all the money you needed.

Once you know what type of writer you want to be, then the next question is, why aren't you doing it?

There can be lots of reasons like no time, too many other commitments, don't know how...and the list goes on.

But the truth is that you're probably afraid of failure, so you invent excuses and stick to them.

The good news is that unlike other professions, it takes no money to start, the hours are flexible and it  requires no specialist training.

So if you haven't starting doing the type of writing you want to do, or you're already a writer but you're not enjoying it, then the time to make a change has come.

But don't go thinking that you need to quit your job or sit and write all day long, because you don't.

You just need to know what you want to do and then start doing it, even if you only have an hour or two to spare every day.

Stop making excuses and start living your writing dream.

If you want some inspiration, just look at all the writing books and writing courses available at http://cheritonhousepublishing.com.