The year was 2012, and I was en route to Vietnam with my family when I opened a Facebook account to share holiday photos. I hardly posted any.

Transferring photos to a computer and then to Facebook was too tedious. My Facebook account stayed dormant for six years.

Big mistake!

2012 was the golden year when it was possible to build a large fan base on Facebook organically. Many savvy entrepreneurs took advantage of it and grew a big following, taking advantage of the Facebook algorithm.

I came back to Facebook when I started a blog in 2018 and linked it to my Facebook account. My articles automatically got posted on Facebook. But I still never went on it to check if anyone was commenting on them.

My eyes opened to the power of social media at the start of this year, when I started publishing a small article and a sketch on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn every day.

Suddenly my follower number started growing quickly, and I realized I have a powerful tool in hand which I don’t even know how to use properly.

What kind of social media user are you?

Today everybody has a social media account but did you know there are three types of social media users.

• Social Enthusiast: This is someone who loves every platform and preaches why it’s necessary for online growth.
• Social Freebird: This is someone who shows very sporadic interest in social media and jumps from platform to platform, lacking consistency in content.
• Social Slacker: This is a person who knows that social media is important but lacks the interest or knowledge to commit to using it.

I was no doubt a social slacker until the start of this year when I became someone close to Social Enthusiast.

In January this year, I took the challenge to post something on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn each day.

The 100 days of practice challenge originated in the visual arts community and was made popular by the #100daysofpractice.

The idea is that every day for 100 days, artists would post a photo on Instagram of something they were working on. It didn’t have to be a polished or finished product. The idea behind the challenge was two folds — when you track your progress and watch your work progress, it motivates you to put in more work.

I applied it to get better at posting content on social media. For someone who was not active just two months ago, my fanbase grew to 250+ on Facebook, 500+ on LinkedIn, and 99 on Instagram. Tiny numbers by any account, but they mean a lot when put into context.

This is what I discovered after 61 days of posting.

You can’t afford to ignore social media.

Social media may not help you sell books directly, but it can help you build your author brand.

Here are five reasons you can’t ignore social media.

Organic growth

Ask any entrepreneur who is just starting, and they will tell you how difficult it is to grow a customer base. It is even more difficult for writers who are mostly introverts and do not have much marketing exposure. Advertising works, but it requires marketing budgets. Authors don’t have that luxury, especially when they are just starting. Social media provides a way to grow a following organically.

Direct contact

Social media makes it possible for authors to directly communicate with fellow-writers, the publishing community, and their readers in real-time. Many authors communicate regularly with their audience on social media. They answer questions, teach their craft, share their creative process and take feedback directly from their readers. You can’t do that anywhere else.

International reach

Social media opens the international market to the writers who previously could hope to see their books published in a handful of countries. The book signing, mostly, used to be limited to the author’s home country (unless you are a mega-author). With social media, your reader base is all over the world, which is phenomenal and hard to overlook.

Author brand

Today, even well-known authors are expected to be reachable on social media. J K Rowling, Stephen King, James Patterson, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert all have social media accounts either on one platform or another. They use the platforms to build their brand, to keep communicating with their readers.

J K Rowling is the queen of Twitter; she uses the platform to send out the wittiest tweets that keep her fans entertained and engaged. Neil Gaiman’s Facebook page gets an insane amount of comments and shares. James Patterson is active on Goodreads. He not only goes in there and lists what books he’s reading, but actually makes it a point to pick up self-published books and read them and leave comments. Elizabeth Gilbert does live videos on Instagram and has over a million followers on the platform.

In nutshell

We all know that social media is important. The question is, what are you going to do with that information to build your author brand.

In my newsletter, A Whimsical Writer, I teach how to build your author brand step by step and have fun while doing it.

This week’s focus is on what social media platform is better for writers. Subscribe and have it delivered to your inbox.

Photo by Merakist on Unsplash

We are living in the best time ever to make a living with writing. The internet makes it possible to sell your written words directly to a global audience.

But there is only one catch. It won’t happen by itself. You will have to have a strategy.

The strategy is the last of the five pillars of authorpreneurship.

In the last four articles, I wrote about mindset, time, skills, and stamina. If you haven’t read them yet, it is worth reading them first before continuing with this article, as it ties all the elements discussed before.

Success comes by design, not accident.

The word “strategy” originated on the literal battlefield. It derives from an ancient Greek word referring to the art of setting up military resources in preparation for war. In addition, more than a few business experts have compared strategic planning to a chess match, in that it usually requires you to concentrate not only on the field of play before you, but on numerous moves ahead. — Keith Krach

When I embarked on my writing journey, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I did things in the “monkey sees; monkey does” manner.

I followed whatever advice I could find ( I must admit there is no shortage of that).

Soon I discovered not all the advice applied to everyone.

Yes, there were some common pathways, but everyone’s journey was different. Certain things came naturally to me, such as inspirational writing, teaching, and fiction writing. But then there are things that I can’t bring myself to attempt.

Your strengths and temperament play a big part in ensuring your success. Your strategy should be based on these two factors first and foremost.

Decide what kind of a writer you want to become

According to my understanding, there are three kinds of entrepreneur writers:

1. Content Writers
2. Non-fiction Writers
3. Fiction Writers

Although there are no hard boundaries and most successful writers write all three kinds, they choose one form as their primary form.

You need to figure out what will be your main focus initially. Not all writing is the same.

A fiction writer might also write non-fiction books and produce regular content. As a content writer, you might embark on fiction writing. That is fine. You will initially have to decide on what you want to use as your primary form of writing.

There is a long learning curve for all three kinds of writing. And each one has different ways of making money.

The income source for the content writers is — freelancing, copywriting, blogging, ebooks, online courses, affiliate income, consulting, coaching, and professional speaking.

Non-fiction writers tend to make money through writing books either on one niche or multiple niches. They also heavily into brand-building through content marketing. But their main aim is to set themselves up as an authority in their field, providing consulting and coaching, and professional speaking.

Fiction writers write genre fiction. Genre fiction (such as thrillers, fantasy, romance) has a cult following, and new books are always in demand by readers who consume everything their favorite writers write.

Once you have figured out what kind of writing will be your primary source of income, you can look at other factors.

Think of yourself as an entrepreneur

This takes us back to the first article of the series, where I talked about the mindset.

It is hard for writers to think of their work as a business but consider for a moment:

Entrepreneurs create value from ideas. — Joanna Penn

If you agree with that, then writers are the ultimate entrepreneurs because we take our ideas and create articles, books, ebooks, print books, audios, and videos. We use a variety of ways to take our words and turn them into value. That value may give readers entertainment, information, or inspiration. It creates value for us as creators too, in terms of income.

Once you reframe your identity as an entrepreneur, you will only be able to devise your vision and mission statements and set your business goals.

Your vision statement will paint a picture of what your authorpreneur business would look like in five years or a decade or two, while your mission statement is your overall, lasting formulation of why your business exists and what it hopes to be.

It includes the goals you want to accomplish and an outline of how you intend to fulfill them.

A strategic plan needs a clear statement of your authorpreneur business purpose. Its reason for existing in the first place. Why did you start an authorpreneur business? What are you hoping to accomplish? What products or services are you offering? What value are they going to bring in people’s lives?

Focus on creating scalable income

In most jobs, you work for a certain number of hours, and you get paid for those hours. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Your work is not scalable, as you’re paid once for the hours that you work.

With a scalable income, you create once and sell over and over again.

Let’s say you spend a year writing a book. The book can sell 100 copies, 1000 copies, or one million copies. Or it may earn money 70 years after you are dead. So your time is spent once, but the income from that time can continue for many years.

Your strategy should include creating content and books that earn you scalable income rather than a one-off payment. It might be a small trickle at first, but that will increase in time as you add more to your portfolio.

Most of us need to have a balance at the beginning as we need money to pay bills. But when you sit down to work, ask yourself — Is what I’m doing scalable?

Concentrate on developing multiple streams of income

For many people, their job is their only source of income which they can lose any time. In today’s world, nothing is stable, corporations least of all.

The same principle applies to making a living with writing. It is important to make sure that you have more than one source of incoming cash. If you have just one platform, one book, one course, or one publisher, you’re likely to find yourself in trouble.

As we live in a fast-changing world, and global internet penetration is expanding every month. To make a living from writing, it is important expanding your horizon. Your strategy should include that.

Create author business plan

A business plan might sound like a dry, soulless thing to write as a writer but think again.

Business is creative.

Everything you can see around you was once an idea in someone’s head. A business mindset took that idea, converted it into a product, and made it available to the general masses to use and benefit from it.

If you can reframe business as creative, then you can also frame a business plan. You are actively shaping your future writing career. What could be more creative than that!

If you can articulate what you want, you can turn it into reality. It becomes a goal.

A goal could be achieved if you take consistent action towards it for a long time.

But a business plan is more than a goal or a dream.

A business plan has a high-level strategic focus on several levels such as:

1. Business Summary
2. Financial Goals
3. Products
4. Publishing Strategy
5. Marketing

Once you have a business plan, it becomes a stepping-off point for the next stage of your authorpreneur journey. It provides you a clear direction—something you should regularly view and update.

I hope this article series is helpful in understanding and preparing you for your authorpreneur journey.

I would love to hear your views in the comments section.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

I am forever indebted to Joanna Penn for leading the way. Her books How To Make a Living With Your Writing and Your Author Business Plan made it so easy to understand a business that is becoming so very complex each day. Much of the material in this article has come from her books.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is the right mindset, skills, time, and stamina.

If someone in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he or she has worked harder at it than you do.

Sure, maybe she is inherently more talented writer than you, had more opportunities than you, is more adept at networking than you; but consistency will always beat talent. Overtime those advantage counts for less and less. This is why the world is full of highly talented, lucky, network-savvy, failed mediocres.

Talent wins initially; consistency wills the long race.

Consistency comes with stamina.

Stamina is misunderstood, however.

Stamina is not the ability to sustain the prolonged effort as the definition as it.

Stamina is not even endurance. It is not the ability to withstand unpleasant or difficult endeavors without giving way.

Stamina is the ability to stay longest in the arena.

It is to prepare yourself, mentally and physically, so that you can stay in the game as long as it takes.

Having the stamina means knowing that you have a long road ahead of you. Your job is to figure out how best to manage it.

The tortoise had more stamina than the hare because the tortoise was consistent.

Stamina is utterly important.

Stamina is only possible if it’s managed well.

People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst, and their dreams will come true. They are wrong. They are insanely wrong.

Being good at anything is like figure skating — the definition of being good can make it look easy. But it is never easy. That is what people continue to forget.

More than anything else, you will need stamina for writing.

As an authorpreneur, you will be writing endlessly and for most of your life.

Take any successful writer. They write thousands of articles and dozens of books, that too with a day job, while raising a family and facing all the things life throw at them.

How do they manage that. The stamina they had developed in the early stages of their writing life.

A book takes several passes — first draft, structural edit, second-edit, third-edit. I know a writer who has done 56 edits on a single book. It takes even seasoned writers six to twelve months to publish a book. And they keep a steady frequency of their books.

But they don’t write ten hours a day.

You don’t have to write ten hours a day to become an authorpreneur.

Not even the bestselling writers do that.

But they write every day.

Find an hour or two in your day. An hour or two is all you need. In that hour or two, do write something. A sentence. A paragraph. A scene. An article.

You don’t even have to publish an article a day. Or a book a year. Don’t worry about all that. First, build the habit of writing every day. That is the stamina you need to build. Writing every day. Even if it is fifteen minutes to start with.

Toni Morrison wrote her books in fifteen minutes intervals. That is all she had with a family to raise and living to make.

It might mean you will not get to watch TV as much you are used to watching before. Or you will not get to surf the net as much as you used to. Or you will not be able to socialize like before. But who cares. You are doing something that is most important to you.

Fifteen minutes a day is insanely easy to find.

Even an hour or two is very manageable.

You can make that in fifteen minutes intervals. Fifteen minutes before going to work, fifteen minutes at lunchtime, fifteen minutes before dinner, and maybe an hour after dinner. Cut out that TV, and you will find all the time you need for your writing.

Guard that time with all your passion. Use it in the best possible way. Not to give output but to build stamina.

It is time a marathon runner spends running around the block every day.

No one is demanding anything from you in that time. No one is pressuring you to write something publishable. Write to build your writing muscles. Write to satisfy yourself. Write to practice putting your thoughts on the paper.

Put the hours in; build the stamina, do it for long enough, and magical life-transforming things will happen eventually.

Top Photo by Hert Niks on Unsplash

When I decided to make writing my vocation, for a long time, I didn’t know how the new model worked.

I understood the old model — writers wrote books for which they get paid an advance and then royalties for years to come. But that model was broken.

The new writers were doing different things. They were writing blogs, ebooks, self-publishing, and selling directly. They were teaching courses and even speaking at events.

It was all very baffling.

I started studying some of the successful writers. They were not the award-winning, world-famous top writers but ordinary writers that most people may not know about but who had built successful businesses from their writing. I bought their courses and started doing what they were teaching.

But even that didn’t help. Some lessons were easy to implement, but others didn’t make any sense.

Frustrated, I stopped following and took time to understand. It was then that I found there are five pillars of authorpreneurship:

1. Mindset
2. Time
3. Skills
4. Stamina
5. Strategy

Whether you are a fiction writer, a non-fiction writer, or a content writer, the five pillars are still the same.

In my previous two articles, I wrote about Mindset and Time.

Today I am going to talk about Skills.

Once you have developed the “mindset” and understood the “time” it would take you to become an authorpreneur; you are ready to concentrate on developing skills necessary for authorpreneurship.

Let’s get into what skills you are going to need.

Writing Skills

For a long time, I thought if I had a good idea, I could write a good article. But that wasn’t true. I soon discovered that having a good idea is one thing, and developing it into a clear, clean, concise, and compelling piece of writing is completely another thing.

I struggled at the basic sentence level. I framed and reframed sentences, taking hours to write a single paragraph, and still wasn’t able to come up with something worth sharing.

Converting your thoughts into a coherent piece of writing is something most writers struggle with.

So much so that many of them don’t get past this stage and give up.

It takes time to develop writing skills.

Time and a lot of effort.

You will have to write millions of words before you get any better at the craft of writing. And I mean, literally millions.

Writing a lot not only helps you craft better sentences but also clarifies your thinking.

That clarity will help you devise your message.

Because your writing will only get read if it has a message that is useful for the reader.

Derek Sivers, an American writer, entrepreneur, and founder of the CD Baby, an online CD store for independent musicians tell the story of two candlemakers. One candlemaker claims that he only uses the finest wax with the best quality wick in his candles. And he sells few dozen candles.

The other candlemaker claims that he only makes prayer candles — the type that you light while praying. And even though his candle quality is not as good as the first candlemaker he ends up selling thousands of candles.

Why?

Because purpose beats product.

Something we all writers need to learn.

Even if you write the best article in beautiful prose, it will not get read if it doesn’t address the reader’s problem.

On the other hand, even a badly written article that solves a problem will go viral.

The books that solve a problem sell many more copies than well-written literary masterpieces. Some of the best-selling books — Rich Dad Poor Dad, Fifty Shades of Grey, and the Harry Potter series are prime examples. They all serve a purpose.

Technical Skills

Authorpreneurship is initially is a one-person show. Besides writing you are going to need many technical skills as well. Skills such as to:

• Establishing a platform
• Building a mailing list
• Expanding your reach
• Self-publishing
• Marketing
• Building online courses
• Speaking (even these has technology involved)

The list seems endless and daunting.

All of these things are formidable for those of us who were not born with technology in our genes. But if you keep your creative hat on and learn them in the same way you would learn writing skills, you can master them too.

The trick is to start early and learn in bite-size pieces.

It also helps if you pick one thing at a time.

I started with building a website. All the knowledge was available for free on YouTube. Within weeks I learned all the features. Then I concentrated on writing blog posts. Posting regularly initially was a big thing. I learned to schedule my posts. From there, I moved on to set up a newsletter and so on.

Today, two years on, I have many skills that I wouldn’t have thought possible to learn in such a short time. Building on the past success, I continue to learn new skills all the time.

Summary

If you thought authorpreneurship was all about being a good writer, think again.

Like a professional in any field, you will have to learn several skills.

But the good news is, it is doable.

Rather than being baffled by the enormity of the task, think of it as a university course to be done over several semesters. Follow the approach of a university student and pick one thing at a time and nail it.

Before you know it, you will have an arsenal of skills that will be the envy of many writers who either wouldn’t bother or are too intimidated with it.

There is no rush. You are not in competition with anybody.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

In my previous article of the five-part series, I wrote about mindset as the first of the five pillars of authorpreneurship.

Who is an authorpreneur?

An authorpreneur is a person who creates written products, creates a brand, and actively promotes that brand through a variety of outlets.

In other words, an authorpreneur is a person who builds an empire around his or her writing. Think J.K. Rowling, think Stephen King, think James Patterson, and you will get the picture.

But first, a disclaimer; I am not an authorpreneur yet. I am nowhere near. I am just a student of those who has made a successful business around their writing and are willing to show the way. I am studying their processes and to lay the groundwork for my own journey. I call them pillars of authorpreneurship.

I have discovered, there are five pillars of authorpreneurship.

1. Mindset
2. Time
3. Skills
4. Stamina
5. Strategy

Whether you are a fiction writer, a non-fiction writer, or a content writer, the pillars are still the same.

After mindset, “Time” is the most important pillar of authorpreneurship.

How much time it is going to take you to become an authorpreneur

When you start any profession, it takes time to learn the ropes. Think medicine, teaching, nursing, economics, or engineering. In any of these professions, you are expected to spend at least three to five years learning the basics. Yet, with writing, we want to succeed instantly.

Writing demands a similar number of years if not the same. I am not counting the hobby writers here who take 5 to 10 years to write their first or only book.

Even if you are a good writer, there is still a lot to learn. The rules of the game have changed. We no longer can sit at our desks and write. We need to learn the other aspects of authorpreneurship.

You got to give yourself at least five years to learn the craft and establish yourself as a writer.

I have been studying the trajectory of many successful authorpreneurs, and five years is the minimum amount of time they have taken to make it.

Case Study #1

Joanna Penn, a fiction and non-fiction bestselling writer, published her first self-help book in 2008. She started writing it in 2006 while working full-time as a system analyst in a larger corporation. The book was a disaster.

In 2008 she lay the foundations of her business with a website, The Creative Penn, and a YouTube channel. In 2009 she started The Creative Penn podcast, which is still rocking after all these years.

In February 2011, she published her first novel, Seven months later gave up her day job to go full-time based on income from the blog, book sales, speaking, and downsizing.

In 2013 she was voted as one of The Guardian UK Top 100 creative professionals 2013.

In 2014 her novel, One Day in Budapest, was in a multi-author box set that hit the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, selling over 100,000 copies in a few weeks. The same year she started publishing fiction under a separate name — JFPenn.

In 2015 she started making 6 figures from her writing — incorporating book sales, blog-related income, speaking, and everything related to her author business.

It took Joanna five years from the day she started writing her first book to make enough money to give up her full-time job and another four to make a six-figure income.

But today, thirteen years later, she owns an empire and aiming for a seven-figure income in the near future. She has written more than 30 books. You can read her full-timeline here.

Before you get any rosy ideas, let me mention the most important detail. Joanna works harder than any full-time employee or a business owner you can think of. She clocks in ten to thirteen hours a day.

Case Study #2

You would think content writers might be able to do it quicker.

Not really.

Tom Kuegler, one of the prolific writers on Medium, started early at 23. He was one of the early writers on Medium. Last week, in the article How I’ve Made $250,000 Writing Online In 3 Years he wrote that bulk of his earnings came from selling his course ($190,000) while writing on Medium ($40,000), freelancing, and sponsorship ($20,000) constituted just a quarter of the pie.

He is twenty-nine today, which means it took him six years to get to a six-figure income.

No matter what online writers might tell you, making money with just content writing is hard.

Very very hard.

Content writers make money with advertising. When advertising is great, they might make a lot, but when the market is down and advertising money disappears (as it did during the pandemic year), content writers’ income takes a big hit.

Tim Denning’s article The Stories of Making Money Online Have Disappeared — Why Is That? explains it much better.

Although this scenario will change too, the only thing that will keep you in the authorpreneur business besides desire and drive is your “why.”

It is your “why” that will keep you in the game, however long it might take you to become an auhorpreneur.

That “why” can’t be money, because it will not show until late. Very late.

That “why” can’t be “making a living” because it will place too much stress on your work and eventually will kill your creativity.

That “why” can’t be fame because it will lead to an inflated ego, and ego will make you a terrible writer.

But if your “why” is embedded in your primary need to write, you will survive any crisis, and establish your empire; doesn’t matter however long it might take.

If your “why” is to educate, inspire, and entertain, and you are willing to work without much compensation, your empire will form as a consequence of that.

Empires are not made, empires are the consequence.

The Roman Empire was not built because Romans conquered half the world; the Roman empire was built because Romans had a system in place that helped them built an empire.

J K Rowling didn’t write to build an empire. She wrote even when things were not favorable, and an empire was built due to that.

Her first book was rejected 12 times before it got accepted by a small publisher. Thankfully now, you and I don’t have better processes available to us.

Three recent trends in favor of writers.

Decentralization. We are no longer at the mercy of the traditional publishing model. The publishers used to be the gatekeepers who held the ultimate power to decide which work can or can’t be published. That barrier doesn’t exist anymore. With nothing more than a laptop or a smartphone, you can write and publish as many books as you like. You can be the owner of your own company. And this is exactly what successful authors are doing.

Connectivity. You can now sell your books worldwide from your study. Anyone in the world can buy your books with the click of a mouse. Most readers have access to the internet, and they are willing to buy books online. The pandemic accelerated the ebook and audiobook sales beyond anyone’s expectations. These trends will continue to grow. There will never be enough books in the world to fill the demand for knowledge, entertainment, and inspiration.

Information. You can learn how to do nearly anything these days. You can learn to write for free by watching YouTube videos or reading blog posts; you can create your own courses and earn while you are learning your craft; you can connect with the right people and build your empire.

To sum up

There are no limits to what you can do as long as you are willing to learn and give yourself time to see the results.

You should not get into writing to make money, fame, or even to build an empire. If they are your core reasons, you will not survive the hardships and the time it will take you to succeed.

But if writing has gone into your blood and you can’t survive without writing, then you will succeed within a reasonable amount of time.