Goals and Dreams

[k_a_webb]

My main goal is to turn this website into a way of making a living. In order to do this I am aiming to make £4000 ( approx. $6371.20) a year, which works out at around £340 (approx. $541.59) a month. This means that I will be able to buy food every month, help out with the rent, and begin saving up in case of emergencies. I do already have some savings, but as far as I’m concerned you can never have enough.

My dream is to make between £600 and £1000 a month, but this, if I ever do manage to reach this level of income, is going to take time.

In order to do this I have some ideas that I would love to work on. The first, which is one of the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, is podcast my stories, but I need to get equipment for that and to afford the equipment I need some income. The second is to make my story worlds into RPG worlds. I doubt this is going to make me much income, but it’s just something I’ve always wanted to do, so if I’m making enough I’ll be able to focus on that a little. The third, and probably the most important, I want to be writing more for other people. I started crowdfunding because I wanted people to get involved with my work, from doing something as small as clicking the write more button to getting as involved as Elizabeth Barrette has and creating a whole new world for one of the collections. I’d love to sell more character adoptions and setting rentals; I’d love to have more people creating characters; I’d love to have readers commenting to tell me what they like and don’t like; I really want to start having more give-aways, like the Surprise Draw, but I don’t think many people were all that interested; and I hope that 2013 will be the year I achieve some of these things.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>My main goal is to turn this website into a way of making a living.<<

Good luck!

>> which works out at around £340 (approx. $541.59) a month. <<

For comparison, my November 2012 Poetry Fishbowl just cracked $500 for the first time. I started the first two sessions free in November-December 2007, so it's taken me 5 years to get here. But I was making a meaningful contribution to grocery money partway through 2008.

>>The first, which is one of the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, is podcast my stories, but I need to get equipment for that and to afford the equipment I need some income.<<

The podcast audience is widely divergent from the text audience, although there is some overlap. Perhaps you could submit your material to podzines? Some of them do their own recording. I've had a few of my poems podcast that way. This is something you could do immediately, since it depends on you and podzine editors, rather than your current text audience.

Starshipsofa seems to be closed to fiction submissions right now but is open to poetry.
http://www.starshipsofa.com/

Podcastle is open to fiction, specializes in fantasy, pays, AND prefers reprints. I'd say look through your sponsored stories and send them the best standalone.
http://podcastle.org/guidelines/

Wily Writers publishes both in text and audio.
http://www.wilywriters.com/blog/submission-guidelines/

The Parsec Awards focus on speculative podcasts. Look at the winners, then backtrack to the markets that originally published them and submit stuff there.
http://www.parsecawards.com/

>> The second is to make my story worlds into RPG worlds. <<

That's a great plan for later. You'd need an audience familiar with your settings, but you have settings that would make awesome games: World Walkers and Donor House especially. I have a moderate knowledge of game mechanics and know a few designers. Also, game projects on crowdfunding sites are prone to drawing stupendous amounts of money if people like them -- that category has projects that overfund routinely. It still depends on audience enthusiasm and product quality, but as a general rule people like RPGs.

>>The third, and probably the most important, I want to be writing more for other people.<<

I'd bump this to second, because it's something you can work on now. I don't know if any of them will become donors, but DeviantArt certainly seems to be catching some new readers. I was amazed to see over 40 views on "The Pregnant Pot." So looking for new venues may prove helpful in widening your audience.