Writing Business

There are a lot of articles on the internet about busines owners who didn’t start until they were in their 50’s so I’m not going to repeat them here. Nor am I going to repeat all the best ideas for businesses to start when you’re over 50 because none of that matters.

I know you don’t want to be told to start a network marketing company, buy a franchise or a consultancy. You’re broke and need money fast. Life has changed for all of us now and millions of us are in the same boat – 50 and over with no savings and no way forward.

So I’m going to tell you what I’m doing right now to move myself forward and hopefully you will find something in it that resonates with you or it gives inspiration to something you always wanted to do but didn’t / never quite have the courage to undertake. Now is the time.

I’ve written elsewhere about this, but over the last couple of months it became far more clear and poignant to myself.

I’m a writer. Have always been.

I pushed this idea down because, without sounding arrogant, I felt like to be a writer was too easy. Not saying that writing is easy it definitely has some challenges, but writing has always, and still, comes easily to me – mostly. During the shut down all of my creatitive juices left me for a while, but they are slowly returning now that I have cleared my head and formulated an absolute plan that I will not waiver from.

Because I had a pretty rough childhood, I had the belief that life was meant to be hard. Struggle was real. Work was inevitable. Unless you came home tired you hadn’t worked. Writing was something I did all the time in my downtime. I read and then I wrote. I would write stories for hours. Essays flowed easily. I could translate complex ideas into the written form without raising a sweat. It felt too easy.

So I thought that there was no way I could make a living doing something I found easy and loved. You are supposed to hate your job and it’s supposed to be hard. These were my beliefs until just recently. I know, but that is how it was.

About two weeks ago I was offered a temporary assignment to go back to work. I would have paid work for a fair while, no time limit, as there was still so much unknown about the economy turning back on. It would have come as a relief to many. It made me vomit very much.

It was at that moment I realised I couldn’t go back. I had spent decades working for other people, or for my clients and it had got me exactly nowhere. Well somewhere – flat broke at 54.

I’m not going to continue to do the same thing and hope for different results because I’ve already run that race and it turns out you don’t get different results.

On the side, I have written on and off. I have played with blogs and SEO. I have started books, published a couple (no you wouldn’t have read or heard of them), all pretty much to no avail. I really thought about why that was. I took all of my excuses away and honestly asked myself – what had gone wrong?

Lack of commitment, lack of consistency, lack of determination and lack of allowance.

For the last few days I’ve been reading how writers are making a pretty decent living on the internet, writing for other websites and getting up to $2,000 a week or more. For words!

So then I thought, well all I need to do is find a client who will pay me for mine and I’ll be fine.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

I found myself falling into the same trap with different characters. Working for someone else. If someone can pay a writer $2000 for some words for their website, that website must be making that type of revenue to justify it.

So, I am cutting out the middle man and making myself that website. Keeping my own words for my own websites. Making my own videos. If people ask or want me to do a guest post – great – but I’m not going to seek that out as a first port of call to start making money.

I’m using my own words for my benefit first. There is still money in blogging – obviously by the paychecks that others are getting – so there is enough for me.

My goal is small in comparison to most. If I can make $80 to $100K a year from writing that’s my life totally set. I only need $40K to survive so I can save and invest the rest and live happily ever after.

It doesn’t feel hard to me.

So, with you in the same position as me, let me ask you this – what isn’t hard for you to do? What skill comes naturally? Do that. That is the gift. Fall into your talents and exploit them as much as you can, rather than being exploited by others for them.

Not everyone will have the courage or the means to do this. I am so very lucky that I have a year up my sleeve to absolutely go all in and write every single day.

I can’t do anything else at this point but to follow what it is easy. I have done my hard yards. It’s time to enjoy what I do.