This is my secret sauce…

I see and hear it on all sorts of platforms over and over again

People want to get paid for the stuff they write.

Platforms like Medium for example.

Just recently the issue popped up again after Medium’s CEO said that they failed to find a proper business model to make a decent amount of money.

They’ve received a total of $130 million in funding over the past few years but can’t find a way to make money…

But that’s a another story.

So I saw a lot of writers on Medium discussing the introduction of so called micro subscriptions where people pay something like 5 bucks a month to authors they like and support.

Here’s the thing…

It’s hard to get paid for doing something that no one asked you for.

No one who blogs or writes (independently) online was ever asked to write and publish thoughts online.

No one asked me to publish my ideas and thoughts online.

And it’s hard to convince someone to pay a monthly subscription for something they didn’t really ask for.

That’s something pretty much every writer is struggling to understand.

Including myself.

Sure, some people, maybe the top 1% will be able to make a living writing on platforms like Medium.

But those people have already found multiple ways to make money writing on Medium or any other platform.

They’ve built a brand around their work.

They didn’t just wait for the introduction of a new feature.

They just went ahead and did their own thing.

Affiliate deals, consulting gigs, ebooks, guide books, courses, social media agencies or what not.

And that’s the problem.

Most people wait for stuff to happen. But you’ve gotta make stuff happen.

No one is going to hand out free cash. Ever…

You’ve gotta work hard for it and then find ways how you can make it work for you.

And that’s why I’m really glad that I never got paid writing or blogging.

Because it forced me to find other ways to make a living.

To make end meets.

It forced me to create all sorts of different things around my writing.

It forced me to hustle hard for a few years to find ways to make it work.

If I got paid for writing online I would probably have gotten super lazy.

Yes, deep down I’m just a fat and lazy kid.

I would never have experimented.

I would never have been able to create all sorts of things.

I would probably not even have my own blog.

You would probably not be reading this right here…

If I waited for things to magically fall in place I would probably still be stuck somewhere in Germany in a cubicle working on things I don’ enjoy.

Here’s the thing…

It’s hard to carve out time for something that doesn’t pay the bills when you’re constantly busy doing things that pay the bills.

So whenever someone asks me what’s my secret sauce I usually tell them this…

I didn’t get a paycheck at the end of each month for the past four years…

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