The Psychology of Writing Online Alongside a Full-Time Job
I spent my time after the day job finding a writing niche that could make me more money.
At that time, I was unaware what writing niche is, so I looked up to other writers who’ve made it before me. One such writer I came across wrote about personal development. He had an innate talent for understanding human emotions, and was a trained professional writer with decades of experience.
He also had other ventures beyond writing on Medium, something I would call a genius strategy.
He wrote an article a week or so on Medium, had a newsletter, and was also working with corporate clients. He had books under his name. He was well-known. And he would openly talk about his journey, goals he had accomplished, failures he had, and insights he had after working for many years and enough experience.
One day, he wrote a detailed article on, “how to start writing online”, and at the end of it, wrote something that motivated me to keep going. He said, I too can become an online writer from anywhere in the world if I just use the right strategy. He promised to provide the secrets on his recent newsletter issue.
An hour later, I subscribed to his newsletter, and joined his email list. Something I thank myself for till this day. You may wonder, I must have learned a lot from him, and that I must be killing it as an online writer.
The truth is: I started writing online years ago, and I still haven’t made it.
The premise of this article is to show you what it’s like writing online alongside a full-time job, and how success as an online writer has little to do with luck or how great of a writer you are, and a lot more to do with how you approach online writing.
I’m a decent writer. Not great, but good enough to write for myself and others. With this good of writing, it’s enough for anyone to make anywhere from $3000 to $5000 a month. That’s the lowest earning I’m talking about.
A good writer who doesn’t know how to market his words can go broke. The opposite is also true here. An average Joe who’s never written a single line of an article before can become a successful online writer that has nothing to do with his innate talent or something else.
Whether you’re interested in them or not, there are two topics many beginner writers often think about: writing online and audience building.
Many wannabe writers have jumped into the pool, and there are more writers on each platform than there are the readers. It has changed how writers make money. And some people make a good living doing this. One way of doing it is ghostwriting or freelancing.
Then, there’s this — audience building, which is another story.
While many writers talk about how to build an audience, the wisdom would be — just stick with it long enough until those around you give up on it entirely.
I’ve seen evidence of it. And it’s not the talented or the most genius writers who survive and build an audience online, it’s always the ones who stick with it for a long time, years, or even decades.
And, that to me, is fascinating, as it is important.
Everyone’s Almost Right About Everything, And They’re Equally Wrong About It Too
So let me tell you about a problem. It might make you feel a little uneasy, as like me, you’re writing online alongside a full-time job.
Here’s the thing: writers from different parts of the world, with different sorts of talent to understand people, to know about a particular subject, and to find loopholes in a market, who’ve started freelancing, or built an audience online, they all had their own way of doing it. And they all share different lessons.
They have their own unique experience with online writing, what really worked, and what didn’t. So what one online writer may say is a crazy decision, like writing an eBook, another one might be racking six-figures doing it.
If you’re to succeed as an online writer, stop looking for a knight in shining armour who will come to save you. You have to go out there, and get a taste of failure to make it.
No One’s Lucky, It’s Just They Stick With It Long Enough. But If You Ever Find Other Writers Who Stick With It Long Enough and Never Made It, It Just Might Be The One Who Made It Was LUCKY
Luck is incomprehensible. Some say, every outcome in life is guided by some external force. Others say, it’s just pure hard work and talent. But the environment and experience makes the difference here.
By the time Justin Welsh began writing online, he had enough experience in working at building multi-million dollar startups from scratch, as he had worked as an executive previously.
So when he started writing online, he never approached it as a hobby or something he loved or deeply cared about because of how the art of writing words made him feel. He created a system, used innovative approaches, tried and tested countless things, and it’s just that last year, his one-person solo writing business made him $7.5 in revenue.
Justin Welsh just happened to be at the right time, with enough experience as an executive at building multi-million dollar startups, when the content economy was just booming and not many people have started building a larger audience on X platform or LinkedIn.
One Principle Almost Every Successful Online Writer Use: The Principle of Compounding
Nicolas Cole has been writing online since he was 17.
He is 5X author, 4X top writer on Quora, co-founder of Digital Press, Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy, Typeshare, Write With AI, and to date, his articles have accumulated more than hundred million views, making him one of the most read writers on the internet.
His success as an author, successful online writer and an entrepreneur can be relied on one fact: compounding.
And so that is where the fun begins.
If you had just published one article a day, when you were 22, imagine how many articles you would have published by the time you reached 25 or 30, how many articles would have gone viral, how many readers would have approached you, how many books you’ve sold, and how many clients would you have got from it? Would you be earning $50,000 a year, or $50,000 per month?
That’s where the compounding comes in.
That’s consistency.
Now, combine this with errors you make, changes you’ll make, lessons you’ll learn, and doubling down on your wins — there you have it — a perfect story for how you began writing online alongside a full-time job and template for you to share with the world, the insights you’ve learned.
All the best. Keep going.
