What went wrong?

Right on target

Let’s sit down a little and analyze the situation above to see what went wrong and what prevented you from getting hard cash.

First the story you heard was simplified too much. How can you expect a 5-6 years period to be resumed in a 10 minute interview without loosing some big clue. Also after that you are also over simplifying the story by omitting clues that bother you like ‘I’ve worked hard for the first few years’ and you do that because you said to yourself ‘I’m smarter and I won’t need to work as much to achieve success’ but that’s wrong and you know it now.

Secondly, you try and copy the exact idea, replicate the same steps, which is also wrong because the situation has changed and it’s time to tweak things a bit. Plus the first man that landed the Moon appears in history books, not the second guy. Try and get your own idea and start putting some work hours.

Then there are factors like different environment that makes some moves obsolete. Try and identify what changed and see what you can do to take advantage. Me too doesn’t always work.

And probably, the most important factor is the fact you’re not ready to give 100% for the first years to achieve success. It’s a bad trade as you can secure your future in just a few years of hard work, followed by calmer periods after that if you play your cards right.

Listen to yourself

I don’t agree with people saying things like ‘if you didn’t get on the right path when you are young there’s no way you can be successful when you’re older’. There are plenty of stories out there to back up my belief but that doesn’t means the clock is not ticking, so get out there and get something done seriously. The pie is big enough for everyone. Don’t fall in the 9% who failed or the 90% who haven’t even tried.

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Even if what I said above is true there are options for finding good freelance writers on specialized forums. They’re not cheap but if you play your cards right the outcome can exceed expectations.

The question

Freelance Writing

I thing this situation makes people ask themselves the following question: is it better to write content as freelancer or build your own websites and monetize them? I don’t have the right answer, but I can make a list of pros and cons of doing so. The decision is ultimately yours.

So with no further talk here’s my take on making money by writing content: writing content as a freelancer means getting paid per article so your productivity is proportional with the money you earn. On the other hand you get a steady cash flow from the first months when you start writing. If you’re fine with this go ahead.

Building a website needs some additional skills. Promoting it needs other skills so your initial costs are higher (more details on how to do those things can be found on ehow.com). Couple this with the fact that money won’t start flowing in the first months (or years) and you get a picture of why people choose the first option.

But those are not your only two choices. You could take the middle road which means starting off with writing articles to get some money you’ll later invest in building your own website(s). Once you get some money from your own business you can start making the switch at your own pace.

If you are curretly employed and can’t leave the 9 to 5 race then you better prepare to do some extra work. Explain this to your family and prepare them for a 1-2 years period of time when you’ll be, let’s say, unavailable.

It’s important to realize that things won’t change for themselves. You’ll have to work hard to accomplish success online, but the satisfaction is worth it. After all this translates to a simple question: are you willing to trade a few years of your life for a good life or you like to crawl gently through life from one paycheck to another.

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If you are an amateur thing are pretty easy, you have to get your photos on a stock photography website. Here you create a photographer account and start upload your pictures, which may or may not be approved.

Currently I don’t know any stock photography website that doesn’t check what you’re posting. Now let’s see the ups and downs of selling your photos on the web.

First, you must understand that you won’t lose your copyright of the uploaded photos (unless you want that. Some websites have this option, and the reward is bigger, of course).

The amount of money you get from a photo depends on several factors: number of downloads, size (the bigger the better), what rights you grant the buyer, uniqueness (if it’s only posted on one site you earn extra).

There are several websites, you only have to search for "stock photography" on Google and pick one of the names from the first page. Now I’m going to make a list of the ones I’ve used, when I got a thing for photography, three years ago:

www.shutterstock.com
www.dreamstime.com
www.bigstockphoto.com
www.canstockphoto.com
www.istockphoto.com

To make it easy to estimate how much money you can get bear in mind that I’ve uploaded around 50 approved photos to each of those sites and I’ve got around 300 $ in the first two years. That doesn’t seem too much but if you upload ten times more pictures you get more.

There are also more things you can do, like promoting your work on your blog, or embedded on those stock websites or you can do an assignment, which is basically making photos on a given theme, which always pays better.

If you are a professional user you can always try to get approved on Corbis, but you might be already making money.

You can learn more about selling stock photos from this book: Digital Stock Photography: How to Shoot and Sell

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