Income Potential ...

[cherylannej]

Hi All,

I've been watching the recent articles purchased for quite a while now and it strikes me that unless people earn very handsomely through Private Requests, there cannot be many people making a good income from the site (ie anything like a liveable amount to replace fulltime earnings) because the number of articles sold per day across the whole site, and the total value of the articles, is very small given the overall number of writers and articles posted.

I'd be interested in veteran writers' views on whether this IS a distorted view because after a while, a successful writer would start to get private commissions and that's where most of your income is generated...or is it a case that not all 'articles sold' end up posted on the 'sold' list....or is it really this bleak.

Don't misunderstand me; I'm not feeling at all negative, just trying to get a feel for what I can realistically achieve given fulltime attention on this site.

I think this is a phenomenal site and I have never enjoyed 'work' so much in my life! I am prepared to put all effort in this direction and have been ploughing much time into building my article bank, but if at day end the earnings are very unlikely to take me into a fulltime payment scenario, I should invest less time.

Cheryl-Anne

[Celeste Stewart]

Not all sales show up on the list. For example, if a sale is made right now, but the transaction doesn't clear until Saturday, it won't appear on the list until Saturday when the payment clears. By then, it's likely that newer transactions are appearing on the Recently Sold list (if that makes sense) because the "sale" has today's date recorded -- or something like that. Anyhow, it gets buried under newer transactions and with only 20-25 slots showing in the list not all sales appear. Plus, now all new customers have a slight delay with their first purchases as CC has implemented an anti-fraud step for newer customers.

As far as income potential goes, I do well here. Yes, definitely a livable amount/full time earnings. I know of others who are doing well here, too.

[jadedragon]

It is a personal thing. Can you write enough at the right rate to earn a full time living? If you earn a reasonable amount per hour writing, you will earn a full time living writing here full time.

[Antonia]

As Jadedragon says, it does depend on how long it takes you to write. Have you tracked your output and figured out your hourly earnings? If it's a liveable wage, than you can make a full-time income here, period. It doesn't matter how many other writers are doing so; not everyone writes full-time, or wants to.

[jadedragon]

Well researched articles are worth more but they take more time to write. Writing what you know well helps knock off articles quickly. If you have specialized knowledge you can do higher value articles without all the research time.

[cherylannej]

All good info, thanks very much everyone.

I know that I can hit personal targets to produce the right number of articles per day, and where on the basis of me selling (say) 20% of those it breaks even to earn 'a living wage' for my outgoings. I'd far rather put all of my efforts here and saw 6 of my articles bought last week with one still 'waiting', even though at that stage I had only posted 22. As long as I am reassured that there are enough buyers visiting the site and other writers earning well, I'll carry on investing my efforts here. I was just panicked when I saw how few articles were listed as 'sold' per day and wondered how it could ever add up.....!

[Antonia]

Cheryl-Anne, I took a look at your portfolio and was impressed to see how many articles you've sold already - that's a good percentage for such a small portfolio! Also, you're writing about popular topics and your titles are eye-catching. As you start writing more, you'll sell more than 20%. I'm looking forward to hearing about your next milestones so please keep us posted

[cherylannej]

That's a really kind, encouraging post Antonia--sorry it took me a few days to come back and see it! I really appreciate it, thank you.

[Gouldm80]

I've yet to sell an article, and believe me when I say that it's not because I'm overly attached to them. I now have 8 articles for sale and 6 pending editing. I'm trying to operate with the idea that patience is a virtue. The people who have succeeded the most on this site attest to the fact that even if no one buys your articles right away, there is still a large enough client base that they could be swept up long after you forgot that you even wrote them. I don't think this site would work well for people who need instant gratification.
I browsed some of your writing, Cheryl, and it looked quite good. I try not to click on articles too much because I don't want your "hits" count to rise and create a false sense of excitement, but it looks like you're doing fairly well.
I'm gonna keep plugging away, and I wish you the best of luck.

[Debbi]

Articles do sell long after they're submitted. I sold two articles this week that I wrote a year ago. One was for a public request last year (that wasn't chosen) and the other was one I cooked up myself and already sold once for usage to a CC customer a while back. It is such a nice suprise when an article you forgot about sells! Just keep churning them out and most will sell eventually. The trick here is to constantly add to your portfolio so you're not sitting aruond waiting for the pot to boil

[Antonia]

The other day I sold my very first CC submission ever, written in May 2009. That was a fun notification to get! I just checked now and found that out of my first ten CC submissions, 7 have sold (one more than once). But if I'd waited around for them to sell before writing anymore, I'd have missed out on a lot of sales.

[Celeste Stewart]

Antonia, you just proved David Kool's research to be true (70% of articles sell)!