How I Made $11,000 From Writing in 30 Days

And what it took to get there

Tim Denning
Aug 7, 2019 · 10 min read

Photo by Austin Poon on Unsplash

If you asked me whether I would ever make money from writing, I would have
said no. I have no special skill, gift, or even a writer to mentor me.

In the last 30 days, I’ve made more than $11,000 from writing.

It was after doing an audit of my expenses for the month that I realized, “Holy shit,
there’s $11,000 of income just from writing!”

So here’s the deal: If I can make money from writing, you definitely can too. The
reason for this article is that the most common questions I still get are:

1. How do I get started?

 2. How does typing words actually make money?

So without any fluff, BS, broken promises, dreams of Ferraris and selfies with
Richard Branson, I’m going to tell you the answer to these two questions after
doing it successfully for more than a year.

Ready? Let’s go.

From 2014–2017
Not a single dollar was made from blogging during these years.

Let’s be clear that the start is a slow burn. But the good news is that I wasn’t just a
shit writer to begin with—I was a really shit writer, and a lot of time was wasted.
You can definitely do better than me by avoiding a few of the pitfalls.

The pitfalls:
Don’t start your own blog, as it wastes your time and people won’t find it

Write everywhere in the beginning (Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram)

Do not ask for help from other writers until you have a library of work (no one
will help you if you have three published articles to your name)

Pitch major publications once you have found your lane, not in the first week of
starting

Don’t take too long to pitch major publications, though

Do not spend a dollar on logos, paying to boost articles, or portrait photos

By avoiding these pitfalls, you can build momentum quicker than I did.

Getting Started
I want to make this so easy that you can’t screw it up.

Pick two topics

The two I chose were entrepreneurship and personal development. Write about
these two topics and nothing else.

Make sure they are topics you know something about or at least have enough
passion to research without getting bored.

Schedule the writing weekly

I chose Saturday at the start because it was the one day I wasn’t working. Pick the
day that you know you’ll have time and set it in your calendar as a recurring event.

Bonus tip: For added accountability, tell a mate what you have committed to and
agree that you will pay them $100 if you miss a Saturday of writing. (This idea
came from when I had a personal trainer and often couldn’t be assed going to the
gym, but the fear of him being upset, and the loss of $35 due to cancellation, was
enough to get my skinny little ass to the gym and pump those weights.)

Do not think about money

You can’t make any substantial amount of money from writing until you have put
some time into your art.

Technically, you could make a few bucks on somewhere like Fiver, but the work
will be so uninspiring that it will likely be the cause of you giving up. Sure you
could make $20 for writing an article, but that is poo change compared to the
thousands you can make by getting good.

An excellent mindset to have is to write off at least the first year. Start by doing it
for free because that will test you and reveal whether you really enjoy doing it.
Without the pleasure you get from writing, you’ll likely give up.

Try not to overdo it

Right now I could write every single day, but I purposely do not. Starting out can
also make you really excited to the point where you overdo it. Overdoing it leads to
you feeling as though you have run out of ideas.

Here is what took me five years to understand:

The best writing ideas come from actually living life and going outside

Time away from writing is where the inspiration to write comes from
 Going to work each day gives you perspectives you can write about

If all you do is lock yourself in your home office and write every day, the good shit
that people want to read from your experience and view of the world will be hidden
from plain sight.

Use someone else’s platform

I said before not to start with your own website for a damn good reason.

Having your own website will force you to piss fart around choosing website
templates, engaging with web developers, paying for hosting, endlessly screwing
around with column widths and a whole bunch of other BS that will not make you
$11,000 per month later on.

Start with someone else’s platform.

I started on my mate from Western Australia’s Wordpress blog. He did all the SEO
nonsense, marketing, and traffic watching so I could do the writing.

Another way to start is by using a social media platform. Medium is the obvious
choice, but people also forget some not-so-obvious choices:

LinkedIn articles

Long-form copy on Instagram next to an image

Short posts on Twitter

This one is really crazy: you could write a long-form article as a

comment on someone’s post who has a big audience (someone like Gary
Vaynerchuk)

That last point is very left-of-center, but I have genuinely seen people do it. Get
creative as there are so many ways you can practice the art of writing.

The goal is to find a place where you can write without distraction and say
something useful, inspiring, or entertaining consistently.

Through that process, you find what works and what doesn’t, and if you’re lucky,
you’ll get a small audience.
Spend a Stupid Amount of Time Writing in
the Beginning
So much of my time at the start was wasted doing podcasts and promoting my
work to an audience I hadn’t earned.

Wherever you are starting from, you need to find your niche, your voice, and your
unique way of putting sentences together.

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

There is no substitute for doing the writing itself. If I could go back in time the way
Marty McFly did in Back To The Future and do one thing differently, it would be to
stop being distracted by bullshit and just do the writing.

The reason we avoid doing the writing is because it’s the hardest bit. Doing the
writing, though, is what made me the $11,000 in 30 days — not anything else.

Format Your Work Like a Pro

My first articles were huge walls of text—even if you could see a bee’s dick from
100m away, you would not be able to see where a sentence began and ended.
Insert lots of white space between your sentences. Use high-quality images and
take the time to find the right photo to match with your article — remember, an
image you choose is just as much a statement as the words themselves.

If I was going back to the start I would have used much bigger, brighter, and scroll-
stopping images. I would also have taken my safety pants off and used more
bolding, images amongst the text, and tools that break things up.

The key with these tools though is balance. You can also overdo it with these tools
and that is twice as bad as not using them at all.

With formatting, if you are feeling lazy, watch the work of the pros.

Making MONEY
Once you have earned the right to make money from writing, the ways to do it are
fairly straight forward. But they’re often hidden in the dark by people who would
prefer to charge you money to tell you how they monetize their words.

Here is how you make money from writing:

A paid column
If you write for long enough, your work will get noticed. Large publications pay
good writers to publish exclusive articles on their website.

Some pay per month and others pay per article. So far, I have only been paid per
article, but I know a few writers that are paid a monthly fee (retainer) to write.

Money from Medium

Medium has a partner program where they will pay anybody, despite their
experience, based on the engagement on their article.

It might only be a few dollars in the beginning, but what is most important is this:
Even only getting $10 a month from Medium makes you a paid writer and the
mental shift that does to you is incredibly powerful.

Ghostwriting
Boy, this one is hidden and not something that you can Google. It’s the secret dark
art of the writers’ world that many big names do not want you to know about.

All those CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders, and influencers often have someone that
does ghostwriting for them. If you are okay to write and not be credited for it in
return for stupid amounts of money, then this is one way a proven writer with
experience can make some easy, ongoing cash.

These opportunities will come to you directly and you can also seek them out by
sending direct messages on platforms such as LinkedIn and Instagram to people
who post a lot. Don’t spam them with sales pitches and just focus on sending them
a link to your writing with a direct “I can do this for you.”

Consulting
Writing is one of the biggest pain-in-the-asses for businesses. They all have to do it
and a lot of them don’t have the time or talent to do so.

Without too much effort, if you write where the eyeballs are, then businesses will
come to you asking for help. You can consult to them by helping them find writers,
mapping out content, and inspiring them to keep going.

When I get these offers directly, I try my best to use manners. Saying something
like “I have a few key articles (provide links) about how I do it and I also do part-
time consulting for those who need something more. What option makes sense for
you?”

It’s soft, polite, non-egotistical and most of all, helpful. Copy and paste the text
above if you are lost and don’t know how to turn inquiries into consulting.

One-to-one coaching
Writing helps give you a voice and it can also help you be a teacher. Some people
are perfectly happy being taught by the words you write for free and that is
completely fine.

Other people want to go deeper and don’t just want your advice; they want you to
hold them accountable, which is another way of saying they want you to coach
them.
Anyone can be a coach and writing is one way to become one and get paid for it.
My first few clients were charged nothing so that I could gain the experience and
figure out how to structure it.

My coaching structure ended up looking like this:

A free consultation upfront to ensure I was a fit for the client and they were a fit
for me

Ten-week chunks of coaching paid upfront via PayPal

A specific area to cover each week

One to two homework tasks for the client every week

A final assessment at the end of ten weeks

A soft offer to continue after ten weeks if it made sense (sometimes it didn’t)

Speaking at events for a fee

When you develop a voice, people again want you to go that extra step and help
their teams — sports teams, leadership teams, business teams, not-for-profit teams
— with your knowledge and experience.

The price range for this varies greatly and a lot of it comes down to how good you
are at negotiating. I’m going to be completely transparent and say that I have been
offered anywhere from $5000-$10,000 for up to sixty minutes of speaking.

Someone I know gets $20,000-$40,000 for one hour, plus business class flights
and five-star accommodation. There is another dude I know who is just starting
out and gets $500 a talk.

The price range is endless but it’s another way to make money from writing.

An online course
I launched one last month and it flopped—and I wrote about it, as it was 100% my
fault. With that aside, you can still make good money helping beginners in your
field of expertise.

I created a course a few years back that did pretty well and often it comes down to
how good the topic is that you are teaching.
Like with most of the advice in this article, don’t overdo it, okay?

YouTube ads
Many writers also become vloggers as another way to express themselves. If you
want to get really creative, you can also embed your own videos in your writing as
another tool to connect with the audience.

YouTube is a long game and having a very deep and narrow niche tends to work
best. If you can pump out lots of videos that are 5–10 minutes long every week,
after a year or so, you can generate money from it via ads.

My promise at the start of this article was not to sell you the dream too much, so I
want to add one thing: YouTube is one of the hardest games to play given how long
the platform has been around for. Getting views is not easy, so you really need to
be dedicated to it, otherwise just stick with the writing.

Well-Paid Writers Have Lots of the Following

One final bit of advice is not to forget the soft skills.

Honesty

Humility

Kindness

These are the skills that take you from earning $1000 per month, which is decent,
to earning $11,000. No one wants to read the work of a writer who is in love with
themselves and thinks their shit doesn’t stink.

Be yourself in all its glory.

That’s How to Make $11,000 in 30 Days

Now all that is left is to ask yourself whether you would like to do the same —
because you totally can.
If a skinny guy from Australia with no grammar or spelling skills can make
$11,000 in 30 days, then you can too.

Remember to be helpful and enjoy the process more than the money.

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