Guest Blog Post: Why You Shouldn’t Expect to Earn a Living From Writing Day One

Image By Athena

You’re a budding writer. You’ve just landed your first writing job and you are thinking “finally, I’m going to make the big bucks!” Right?

Wrong!

Don’t be fooled when looking at the likes of J.K Rowling and Stephenie Meyer – we can’t all make a massive fortune like them! In fact, most writers don’t make a lot of money at all. You shouldn’t expect to earn a living from writing from day one. And here’s why…

No Proof, No Pay-Check!

When you’re trying to bag your first writing job, you can’t expect to get it based solely on your A in GCSE English! Anyone can get a qualification, but publishers are looking for people with experience and talent.

And you can’t expect a wage for your writing if you don’t have any examples of your talent! How do employers know that you’re any good? They don’t. So don’t expect to get employed as a writer if you have no real proof that you can write.

So how do I do that? You ask? Well, it’s simple really – as long as you aren’t expecting a pay check!

If you write fiction, sign up to websites such as Writer’sCafe.com, or Movellas.com, where you can publish your work for free and build up a fan base. This will show potential employers how popular your writing is, based on reviews and feedback given by others. If you’re an aspiring journalist, what better to kick-start your career than by having a blog? If you join voluntary schemes such as GKBC’s Writer Academy, you can build up a huge portfolio of published work on the net.

Now, I know that if you’re still reading this then you really want to make a career out of writing. But unless you spend a good while following the tips I gave above, don’t expect to make a fortune! And even then, there’s always competition….

Competition, Competition, Competition

Even if you follow these handy guidelines, you still shouldn’t expect a mass of banknotes to come flooding in – especially if you’re a new writer – because the odds are, there’s always going to be someone better than you. Maybe they’ve had more work published. Or perhaps they’re simply more talented. Either way, you can’t anticipate a huge salary when you’re compared to those who have been in the industry a lot longer.

At the beginning of your career, you’ll spend most of your time sitting on the sidelines and watching others achieve all the glory. You’ll try your best, and sometimes even then you may not succeed.

You might not like it. You might not even understand it. But you’ve got to accept it. Because if you’ve made it to the end of this post, and still want to be a writer, then I guarantee that you will succeed. Because real writers aren’t in it for the money; they’re in it simply for their love of writing and willingness to succeed.

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•  License: Creative Commons image source

Mikhaila Friel is a budding writer and a devoted blogger. She writes for GKBCinc and she recommends their Writers’ Academy to other aspiring writers.

The Madness of Social Media

Social media is like chasing the White Rabbit.

Social media is a necessary evil for all writers. If you are serious about driving sales to your book, you’ll know that social media is the hard work and that writing your book was the easy part. I spend a few hours a day on social media, socializing on Twitter, trying to drive traffic to this website. I need to start working on my Goodreads account and thinking of things for my FB author page. This social media is planned work, not something I do during my leisure time. In fact, my leisure time is reading and being with my fiancé.

How do you navigate this maddening world of social media? I can only give you my experiences, but hopefully they’ll be of some service to those drowning in the social media cesspool.

For one thing, a blog is a great thing to have, especially on your website. I use WordPress as my website because there are more templates available, they have a cleaner, professional look than BlogSpot, and it is so easy to follow others and leave comments without having to go through the annoying captcha crap because BlogSpot doesn’t have a good spam filter. Eventually I’ll buy the domain and change it, but I’m saving up my money. Having a blog on your website helps drive traffic to your other pages: your about me, your writerly works, and so on and so forth because it’s all right there. No need to have your website and blog separated. Heck, WordPress allows you to create your own template if you or someone you know is HTML efficient.

You can use your blog to update on you, your life, your writing life, you in general. You can do guest blog posts, interviews, book reviews, and giveaways. I’ll be doing a giveaway once I hit 200 followers. I’d like 1000+ by the time my book releases, but we’ll see. You’ll also want to give back. Comment on people’s replies to your blog posts. If you don’t have time, please mention this as a courtesy to your followers. If time allows, comment on their blogs. Go to the Reader and find blog posts there. Make Followers. Don’t expect anyone to follow back or read your stuff.

Get a Twitter account and use it correctly. I have been having genuine conversations with people on Twitter and have been gaining more followers as a result. Link your Twitter account to your blog so you can get more from there. Share links to your blog on your Twitter account, but only after you’ve conversed with people. Don’t spam your Twitter feed with links.

Get accounts on other popular social media sites, like Instagram and so forth. Keep blogging. Blog as often as you want and/or can and/or what works for you. Be persistent. People don’t build a following by sitting back and waiting for people to come. You will have to do some serious leg work to build a following. Quality blogging/Tweeting/whatever is first and foremost. Create something your gut tells you people will want to look at. Also, join writing forums to get you and your book out and around. While I’m not wild about AbsoluteWrite, it’s a great forum to converse with other writers and talk about your book without being branded as someone tooting one’s own horn.

Do whatever you can think of in the social media sphere. You and your book will thank you.