Update: 3rd April 2014
Apr. 3rd, 2014 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
k_a_webbFor a minute I was worried that rent day is in 10 days, but then I realised that I already have my half of the rent for April and that I'm currently working on May's rent. So far I have £70, which will be £80 after today, and then I need another £110. I'll be getting some money for day care either at the end of this week or the beginning of next, which should be around £40, and I was planning on putting £30 of that towards the rent while putting £10 into the grocery money, which will mean I'll need another £70. That's about two weeks of day care, so I should easily have it by the middle of April, even if I'm not looking after Tyler (the dog I mentioned I might be going to look after). At the moment I'm not certain what's happening with that, as Teresa hasn't heard from Tyler's owner in a while, so I want to earn some other income via the website - because so far I haven't made any money this year from it.
It's April, three months of the year are already gone, and I want, by the end of this year, to be making a regular income from my writing. I'm sure I've mentioned before that my aim is £80 a month, which really seems like it should be simple, but for some reason it hasn't been. Maybe it's because I don't advertise enough or I advertise in the wrong places - but that's something I don't want to be doing right now. I want to try to make word of mouth word for me and with this aim in mind I've come up with an idea I like. Like most of my ideas I don't know how well this one is going to work, but I want to give it a go, especially as it should help me get some things finished. What I'd like everyone on my friend's list to do, if they read my writing or just want to help me out, is to chose up to ten of their favourite stories, which can be from the same collection or all from different ones, and link to them in a post, with a little description of what they're about and whether or not they're complete. I'm happy to write something that can be copied and pasted about what I do - which I might already have from my blog tour. If you don't have time or know enough to put together a list yourself and still want to help then I can put one together for you if you let me know which collections you like the most. In return for this good deed I will write 5000 words for every link in the next few months, which is why I've limited the list to ten links, and if I find that someone has visited my site from this list (it'll come up in my list of referrers) I'll add another 1000 words, so I write 6000 words for every link. Then if I get any donors thanks to this (the donor can put your DW/LJ name in the Paypal notes) or one of your friends chooses to make their own list then I'll double the word count, so I'll post 11,000 words for every link, which may mean I finish off one story and move onto the next.
Writing is something I will never stop doing, even if I never make any income from the site, but it's something I really want to happen. All I've ever dreamed of doing is making a living from my fiction and that will be my aim until the time comes when I find my only other choice is to get a real job. Fortunately I have the day care, which works nicely around my writing, and I know this might not always be the case, so I need to have a back up plan. I have no idea what real job I'd be able to get, or how good I'd be at it, but I know that I would much prefer it to never happen, so the more help I get to make my dream a reality the happier I am, because I know, even though I don't know you in real life, that you care enough to do something. The only downside of this is still that I'm in the UK and most of the people I know read my work are in the US, which makes my nice £18 sponsorship option into something that costs nearly $30. Although for this you will get 6,000 words of fiction posted publicly in your favourite collection(s), donors perks of your choice (eg. another 6,000 words of fiction emailed to you; 6 pieces of bonus material; or 3,000 words of fiction and 3 pieces of bonus material), the £18 will also go towards a yearly perk and a site perk, which means I'll be £2 off posting another 5,000 words of fiction the next month. Does this seem worth $30? I hope it does, because I want my writing to be cost effective for readers who donate, especially those who are willing to donate every month.
So, yeah, once again I'm rambling about income and writing and all the things I seem to ramble about on an all too regular basis. At the moment I'm doing well, but I can't stop worrying about this changing in the future, because I know how quickly things can change. I want something I can think of as regular income for if something happens to mean that day care isn't a possibility any more or if we have to move out for some reason or... there are so many things I could think of that could go wrong and I want to be prepared for them. The best way I can think of to do that, especially as I have to be home to look after the dogs, is to have the website making regular money for me, so that if the time comes when everything goes wrong I don't need to worry.
It's April, three months of the year are already gone, and I want, by the end of this year, to be making a regular income from my writing. I'm sure I've mentioned before that my aim is £80 a month, which really seems like it should be simple, but for some reason it hasn't been. Maybe it's because I don't advertise enough or I advertise in the wrong places - but that's something I don't want to be doing right now. I want to try to make word of mouth word for me and with this aim in mind I've come up with an idea I like. Like most of my ideas I don't know how well this one is going to work, but I want to give it a go, especially as it should help me get some things finished. What I'd like everyone on my friend's list to do, if they read my writing or just want to help me out, is to chose up to ten of their favourite stories, which can be from the same collection or all from different ones, and link to them in a post, with a little description of what they're about and whether or not they're complete. I'm happy to write something that can be copied and pasted about what I do - which I might already have from my blog tour. If you don't have time or know enough to put together a list yourself and still want to help then I can put one together for you if you let me know which collections you like the most. In return for this good deed I will write 5000 words for every link in the next few months, which is why I've limited the list to ten links, and if I find that someone has visited my site from this list (it'll come up in my list of referrers) I'll add another 1000 words, so I write 6000 words for every link. Then if I get any donors thanks to this (the donor can put your DW/LJ name in the Paypal notes) or one of your friends chooses to make their own list then I'll double the word count, so I'll post 11,000 words for every link, which may mean I finish off one story and move onto the next.
Writing is something I will never stop doing, even if I never make any income from the site, but it's something I really want to happen. All I've ever dreamed of doing is making a living from my fiction and that will be my aim until the time comes when I find my only other choice is to get a real job. Fortunately I have the day care, which works nicely around my writing, and I know this might not always be the case, so I need to have a back up plan. I have no idea what real job I'd be able to get, or how good I'd be at it, but I know that I would much prefer it to never happen, so the more help I get to make my dream a reality the happier I am, because I know, even though I don't know you in real life, that you care enough to do something. The only downside of this is still that I'm in the UK and most of the people I know read my work are in the US, which makes my nice £18 sponsorship option into something that costs nearly $30. Although for this you will get 6,000 words of fiction posted publicly in your favourite collection(s), donors perks of your choice (eg. another 6,000 words of fiction emailed to you; 6 pieces of bonus material; or 3,000 words of fiction and 3 pieces of bonus material), the £18 will also go towards a yearly perk and a site perk, which means I'll be £2 off posting another 5,000 words of fiction the next month. Does this seem worth $30? I hope it does, because I want my writing to be cost effective for readers who donate, especially those who are willing to donate every month.
So, yeah, once again I'm rambling about income and writing and all the things I seem to ramble about on an all too regular basis. At the moment I'm doing well, but I can't stop worrying about this changing in the future, because I know how quickly things can change. I want something I can think of as regular income for if something happens to mean that day care isn't a possibility any more or if we have to move out for some reason or... there are so many things I could think of that could go wrong and I want to be prepared for them. The best way I can think of to do that, especially as I have to be home to look after the dogs, is to have the website making regular money for me, so that if the time comes when everything goes wrong I don't need to worry.
