How Much Can You Make A Month?

[Judith]

Hi,

I am curious about the amount of money that can be earned monthly. I have submitted 25 articles in the last two months and have sold ten. I decided to only sell full rights licenses and I am trying to decide if I have made the right decision. Would I have sold more or made more money if I offered all 3 license options? Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

[Antonia]

As far as potential earnings, it's different for everyone since it depends on how much you write. A good approach is to track your data (time spent writing, number of articles submitted and sold, etc) for a month or two and then analyze the figures. You have some data to play with already: you're selling 40% of your articles, so you can come up with a rough estimate of your potential monthly earnings based on that. If you'd submitted those 25 articles in two weeks instead of months, for example, in theory you'd quadruple your earnings. But your submissions-to-sales ration improves over time, so you won't necessarily stay at 40%.

As far as licensing, I like selling for full rights because I earn more upfront that way. Most of my articles do not sell more than once for usage, so I'm effectively taking a paycut if an article sells for usage rather than fullrights. The majority of customers want fullrights anyway, so you could always offer all 3 licensing options and take your chances. It's definitely worth testing various approaches as what works for one author may not work for another.

[jadedragon]

i like to offer usage licenses as well because sometimes a buyer on a budget will take the usage license. If something sells for usage I'll put it out for revenue share and leave it here to sell again, so over time I've got a good chance to earn more than a full rights sale.

[Judith]

Thanks for the suggestions!! I appreciate you taking the time

[Lisa-Anne Sanderson]

I agree with Jade Dragon. Some of my articles have sold for usage rights three or four times. It is always worth
offering the usage rights, I think.