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Why So Many Writers Fail To Make Money
It has taken me 10 years to learn a very hard lesson as a writer.
And I’d like to share it with you.
Just because you took the time to write it, doesn’t mean anyone owes you their attention.
I have written thousands of articles on the Internet. I’ve written multiple books, including the best-seller, The Art & Business of Online Writing. And I’ve built multiple 7-figure writing-related businesses, including a ghostwriting agency for executives. And I am the co-founder of the largest, fastest-growing cohort-based community for people who want to get started writing online, called Ship 30 for 30.
Needless to say, I interact with a lot of writers. I help them. I teach them. I mentor them. And I’m also quite active in both the writing communities here on Medium and on Quora. It’s a small world, believe it or not, and most of us “top writers” all know each other (or know of each other).
And what I notice, more than anything else, is a common theme amongst both aspiring and reasonably established writers.
It’s a question. It’s a nagging. It’s an itch that won’t go away. And it’s a problem many writers are more than willing to spend money with the hopes of instantly solving it.
And that problem goes like this:
“I wrote something. Now why isn’t the world applauding? Why aren’t I making any money?”
Writers think writing is about writing. It’s not.
Writing is not a game of words.
This is what took me a decade to figure out. We’re taught to that writing is about words, but it’s not. We’re taught writing is about having *style* and *style* is this thing that happens when you arrange the words in the right order (no one can say what the order actually is, it just sort of happens—like magic). And what separates “good” writers from GREAT writers isn’t anything tangible, nothing you can point to with conviction. It’s just a feeling. An innate gift, and you either have it or you don’t.
This is what we’re taught. And it’s oh-so-wrong.
