Need Help / Some Input on Earning Money as a Writer

Let me start this by stating, I'm not looking for handouts or gold nuggets. I'm a hard worker, but I'm a bit lost currently.

As the title states I am a writer, predominantly fiction, but I've also dabbled in blogging / content marketing. Still, things aren't picking up, and my earnings are still more beer money than anything.

Here's what I'm doing atm:

Writing Fiction:
I've been writing short form fiction for years now, and I had some success with my stories. I'm a frequent contributor to a big horror podcast, but stories get adapted infrequently, acceptance time is long, so while I earn $100+ per story adapted, that money comes in once every couple of month if that. Other than that, I had some success working with YouTubers, but not all stories are winners or garner interested, and are very dependent on public attention (which is often luck / time based, rather than quality based). I've hit up countless YouTubers (or narrators) about stories, but it's tiring, you often don't get an answer, you get one after weeks or after pestering them with messages. Frankly, it's tiring and annoying.

I'm currently finishing up a novel, but it's going to take more time, and a first time novel making it big / earning big money is something that rarely happens. I think it's not a bad novel, but I'd rather not bet on it making it big, but rather growing my portfolio (I've got a short story collection published already). I've got another finished novel that I've not published yet. I had some interest from one publisher, but the advance was pretty much beer money, and I don't think it's worth tying myself to them in the long run.

Planning on self-publishing a short story, got the cover done by someone who creates covers semi-professionally, but still waiting on editing. Essentially just to test the waters, see if it can sell given my audience on Social Media etc. Don't expect big money.

YouTube / TikTok:

I tried narrating my own stories on YouTube, but things didn't work out well. I've got a thick accent (not a native English speaker) and people described my voice is being 'not listenable'. Thinking of returning to this using Elevenlabs AI, but not sure if it's worth effort given the price point. On TikTok I did what most other narration channels do, essentially using AI voice + gameplay. It's been going all right, but I'm nowhere near monetization. Feels like this part is a losing battle.

SEO:

I worked with someone running an SEO company / blogging service before and wrote some articles on various topics (AEC industry, online marketing, literature, writing), got paid okayish money ($50 per 500 words), but once again, this wasn't a regular thing, and only happened infrequently. The guy said I did great work, and I'm confident that I can write great articles on almost any topic, given my proficiency in English as well as writing in general. The biggest problem is, how to find work or people willing to work with you?

Blogging:

I've got my own writer site, on it I'm not only promoting my own short stories, but also posted a variety of articles related to literature and other media. Some articles do great, and I used to own the #1 position in Google on certain keywords, but have since fallen in the ranks. Still got a good number of first page results and traffic is around 500 visitors a day. Still, this doesn't earn me a lot of money, given the niche. So if I'm lucky the page earns me a good $50 per month, probably less, this is including affiliate earnings from Amazon.

I checked the Core web vitals of the site and pretty much all URLs are either poor or need improvement depending on mobile or desktop. This has a variety of reasons. Obviously I am not too well versed in technical SEO, have installed a variety of plug-ins, but also monetization, large articles and frequent use of images. I'm honestly not sure if I can fix all the problems with the site on my own.

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So that's where I am at right now, and I'm not really sure what to do. Money's rather tight atm, so I can't make any big investments, like say an Audit of the page / pay someone to fix the errors for me.

Like I said before, I'm not asking for handouts, I'm just wondering what direction I could go? I'm a hard worker. I've got no problem thinking most of my free time into this, and have no problem writing for 8 to 10 hours a day. It's just that it feels I'm really not getting anywhere, even though I've got some skills.

Thanks for reading, guys!

Abuse the ElevenLabs free account system. If I'm not mistaken, they offer an 80% discount on the first month, 30,000 characters for $1. Pay $1, use the account, then create another one. Use virtual cards. I would give this a shot since you are a horror content creator, you can use this to create videos on YT/TT/Reels/Shorts, etc.

Investing in content creation is a slightly faster way to make money in relation to SEO (usually). You can do both at the same time but prioritize video creation...

ClickHereAndEarnMoney said:

Abuse the ElevenLabs free account system. If I'm not mistaken, they offer an 80% discount on the first month, 30,000 characters for $1. Pay $1, use the account, then create another one. Use virtual cards. I would give this a shot since you are a horror content creator, you can use this to create videos on YT/TT/Reels/Shorts, etc.

Click to expand...

Interesting. Just checked and you're right. The first month really is only $1 with the discount. That would at least allow me to get a feel for the platform and create one high-level narration. Thanks!

Iuzzu said:

Investing in content creation is a slightly faster way to make money in relation to SEO (usually). You can do both at the same time but prioritize video creation...

Click to expand...

Seems to be right. SEO did okay with some articles, but others simply don't seem to rank, and writing a high quality article can take a good 5 hours or so including research, adding ref-links etc.

I was a freelance content marketer/writer for a few years. I only wrote non-fiction. It wasn't easy to get off the ground but eventually I was able to pull in a mostly-steady income.

I never wrote fiction but I imagine there's much more work available in non-fiction. You should consider writing more non-fiction. Ideally, you could find one or two solid clients and write 2-4 articles per week for them to bring in some regular income while still having time for your fiction work.

If you do go the non-fiction route, it's fine to be a niche generalist when you start, but the real money is in becoming an expert in whatever domain you write about.

As for your fiction writing, you should publish some of your stories on Amazon. There are some good threads about this on BHW if you search.

DConny1 said:

I was a freelance content marketer/writer for a few years. I only wrote non-fiction. It wasn't easy to get off the ground but eventually I was able to pull in a mostly-steady income.

I never wrote fiction but I imagine there's much more work available in non-fiction. You should consider writing more non-fiction. Ideally, you could find one or two solid clients and write 2-4 articles per week for them to bring in some regular income while still having time for your fiction work.

If you do go the non-fiction route, it's fine to be a niche generalist when you start, but the real money is in becoming an expert in whatever domain you write about.

As for your fiction writing, you should publish some of your stories on Amazon. There are some good threads about this on BHW if you search.

Click to expand...

Yeah, fiction is rather niche, especially when it comes to commissioned work, so I've mostly worked on longer works (novellas, novels).

I can imagine having clients that offer steady work is great. I guess the biggest problem for me is finding them or where to even start in that regard. The guy I worked with was a lucky contract I made via Discord simply by hanging out on a writing server.

I plan on self-publishing stories on Amazon, but I'm currently waiting for the editing of one to be done (done for free by an editor friend, but she's going through a tough time so gotta wait... but can't afford to pay for editing atm).