The First Income Report As A Writer In College

Table of Contents

• Making Money As a Writer
• Income Streams as a Writer
• How Much Have I Made Since Starting This Blog?
• My First Huge Mistake
• The Name of The Game Is…

If you don’t already know, as the title and headlines suggest, I am a college student whose career goal is writing. But I want to start making money now and more money the further I go into my career. Being a starving artist or creator or writer is not on my to-do list. Not after college anyways.

That’s what this blog is about. So, subscribe to the email list and check back every week for posts to see how I am accomplishing my goal.

Some writers have been very successful in their careers with their net worths surpassing $ 50 million or $100 million and billions more. There are also writers like me who have yet to publish a piece. But for me, I believe that my writing career doesn’t have to start when I publish a piece. And when I do publish a piece I want to be able to get a nice advance and secure sales.

So what am I doing now? I am using this blog to build an author’s platform and make money to support me along my writing journey.

Okay, so this blog makes me money. But not in one way. For producing content on this blog I get paid

1. By running ads
2. Through afiilate sales

Ad revenue is making me the most money so far. Especially since I have been running ads longer than I have been into affiliate marketing. But affiliate marketing may be more promising for larger sums of income.

So in total, I have 2 streams of income.

This blog is 7 months old and so far I have made…

$0 dollars so far. Lol

For both ads revenue and affiliate marketing revenue, I must reach a payment threshold before I can actually get paid. For affiliate marketing, I have a long way to go. But for ad revenue, I am around $5 away from reaching my $20 threshold.

$20 dollars is for sure on the lower end of the income spectrum. But I could have made much more if I didn’t make this mistake

This is the second blog/site I have created. And AW came about when I decided to switch gears and become serious about writing. My first blog was totally unrelated to writing but after realizing that my side hustle can also help to directly further my writing career, I quickly switched gears and started actuallywriting.com. And I made it look real nice but prepared no content. Despite reading up on how to start a successful blog.

I was also eager to start because I was already paying between $7.99 – $10.99 per month for hosting: Hosting that hosted my previous website. When I switch gears I just changed my domain name but never paused paying for hosting.

To make money with a blog as with any writing gig or career you and I need content or pieces to sell and showcase. So I started my blog and tried to make a blog post per week. And of course, I wasn’t consistent with my posting. But realizing that I was a long way from earning any money, I did some emergency research. I found that I was wayyyyyy behind on blog posts

For most blogs to start making money they generally need, a good niche, a user-friendly site, SEO-friendly content, and most importantly 50-100 quality blog posts. Posting consistently surely helps and is almost required for success. All of these things bring good traffic, which in turn allows the site/blog to make money.

I still have not reached 50 blog posts. But am getting there. Not having enough content held me back from earning more money and sooner. So as I am trying to get to where I need to be, enjoy the content.

Content/work is one of the main names for this game.

One of the main ingredients for my career and this blog is to have pieces. Thank God I realized my mistake or I would be years behind my plan for making money as a writer. Blogging is definitely lucrative for many things in so many ways. Blogging and so many other kinds of freelance writing. So if you decide to pick it up. Create good content, have lots of it ready before you launch your site, and post consistently.

I did use to market my blog through social media but have taken a pause on that to produce more content. With the spring semester in session replacing all that time I was using to market social media with writing blog posts has already been boosting my traffic and discoverability on Google.

Having great content and LOTS of it is important, but it is not the only ingredient for this recipe for success. As I move through my career I let you in on the rest.

Don’t forget to tell me about your writing career, especially if you’re a new writer or new to starting your writing career/job in writing.