The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

Today we went to see Mum. During the conversations we had we turned to talking about jobs and how there are more things that I'm incapable of doing than, unfortunately, I'm good at. She mentioned how I'm not a people person, which would make working in a shop difficult, and I also have very little patience. I'm clumsy, so waitressing wouldn't be a good job for me. Now if someone placed me in a room by myself and asked me to research something I'd be in my element. However that isn't a job that is easy to find, if it exists at all. I know that I'm an introvert, I know that I socialise best online via email or occasionally IM, and that is partly why I started attempting to turn my ability to write stories into a way of making money.

Nearly two years in and I'm not doing as well as I hoped to. Last year didn't help, because of not having a connection to the net for three (possibly four) months, so I've been trying to build up my audience ever since we moved. When I check my site stats I see that I'm getting visitors, which is wonderful, but they aren't consistant and I have no idea what to do to make them more consistant. I've been posting a serial twice a week that I was hoping would help, but it doesn't appear to have worked, unless I'm getting readers at LJ and DW that I don't know about. Maybe having two mirror sites was the wrong choice. The problem is I know I have readers at both sites so I feel like shutting them down now would be a mistake. *sigh* I just don't know what I can do.

I've tried giveaways, I've tried auctions, I've tried commissions, I've tried advertising on web lit sites, and nothing seems to work. So what I need right now is ideas that may help. Next month I'm setting up something new that I think might help me earn enough to be able to buy the groceries without using my birthday money, Christmas money, or savings.

Either that or I need to find a job I think I'd be capable of doing. The problem is that there seem to be so few jobs out there that I would be capable of or would like to do, because if I end up doing a job I don't enjoy I know I'll burn out. It's going to have to be part time, because I'm still going to write, and I know from experience that I'll burnout if I try to work full time. I did when I was at school and college, and I ended up having to take a year off when I was doing my A-Levels because I was trying to write while I was doing my exams. Neither even took up as much time as having a full time job would.