Strategies to Write Books Full-Time

Many authors and indie-authors like myself have a preference for two things. We like to work alone and be our own boss. It’s in our personalities. But, the question remains whether it’s possible to make a full-time living writing books?


Whereas most of our parents, friends, peers, co-workers, and extended relatives have been cognitively conditioned into working what they deem “real-jobs” complete with the forty to fifty-hour per week grind, many of us know otherwise.


We know that in the age of technology, the age of information, it is possible to make a full-time living doing whatever we want.


We can write books, monetize blogs, begin affiliate websites, monetize videos, and an array of other cash flows that weren’t available once upon a time.


Unfortunately, most people believe otherwise, into working for corporations or governments or being taken care of by unions to make a living.


These people claim that another entity is to take care of them and if such entities don’t, they’re in the wrong.


However, it is possible to make a self-reliant living writing and to become self-made in any field these days is easier today than ever before.


Well, I won’t say easier, as there are others like us who realize they can make a full-time living selling services, ideas, or help online.


But, few know the tricks to the trade, as I’ve covered in previous articles regarding SEO, keywords, helping instead of simply selling, etc.


Today, I’m focusing on how you can make a full-time living writing books, since as writers, we’d all like to live off selling our stories. Here’s how.



Write in Different Genres

You can achieve this by writing in different genres and there are many indie-authors who do just this.
I’m looking to do the same in time, deviating from my epic and urban fantasy work to work nonfiction and perhaps even dive into thriller, as my urban fantasy works contain some aspects of thriller.


Some authors will use a different pen name for each genre while using their real name to write fiction. I’m doing the opposite as I believe with many nonfiction stories it’s appropriate to conceal identity. With fiction, you have a wider playing field, but people might get weird with you if you write about them and they take it the wrong way.


You also might want to create different brands for each genre you write. This allows you to appeal to different types of readers. For instance, Joanna Penn uses her real name for nonfiction and J.F. Penn for fiction.


One of the major pros here is each book can be targeted to different markets, so if you write thriller you can entice thriller readers, fantasy will entice fantasy, and so on. This alone allows writers to gain fanbases where they normally wouldn’t if writing in one genre.



Use a Blog

You can use a blog as I have here at My Freedom Flame to drive people to your work. If you look to the sidebar you’ll see my latest works in both the Lord of Columbia and Neo Skyehawk Series.


This is an excellent and free way to promote your books. Say, for instance, you can drive 6,000 visitors a month to your blog; that’s 6,000 eyes on your books. 72,000 per year. As you become an authority in your blog’s niche, your number can grow. Some of the more popular blogs generate up to 80,000 visitors per month. Do the math.


Most ask how is it possible to drive traffic to their site. The fact is it’s easier than it looks and social media is not the way to go about it, though it’s good to have social media links to your blog.


Instead, use Google to your advantage. Google+ is great to use, though it’s meeting its demise in October 2019. I would still share via Google+ because it’s likely Google will create a new social media based around the search engine, so keep that in mind. Also, Google+ is the only social media that will help Google index your article, which is what you need to get ranked.


So, how does Google rank you?


While its algorithms are unknown, those who are consistently ranked in Google utilize keywords for their post.


A good way to find what people are searching for is to go to Google and start typing in keywords related to your niche. If you have a keyword tool, you can type keywords related to your niche into it and such tools will tell you which words are good search terms, competition, and expected traffic if ranked on Google’s first page.


For a complete look at these strategies, I suggest investing in Wealthy Affiliate, as I do, which costs $49 per month with further savings if you pay an entire year up front, or any other time during the year. The also offer a free Starter membership that you can use to test the product, as I’ve done.


Wealthy Affiliate will not only teach you how to drive traffic to your blog, it costs covers site hosting, site security, site email, and a keyword tool, among other perks. It also provides a step-by-step training method to teach you how to build content around your blog that will drive traffic early and often, as I’ve seen on my fledgling blog, Get Pro Football Apparel, launched two weeks ago.


It’ll also teach you how to make additional income via affiliate marketing and advertisement revenue, such as Google AdSense. Some look at affiliate marketing and are immediately confused, however, if you’re a writer who also loves to read, you can start a book review blog reading and reviewing books in an identical genre you write in.


When you have enough blog content created, jump over to Amazon Associates, sign up for an affiliate account, start reviewing books, and boom, after each review place an affiliate link to your reviewed books in your site and you will start making commission off each book sold. It’s quite a simple way to make money while conducting a hobby. Yes, you can get paid to read books.



All Signs Point to Your Books

What’s funny is everything mentioned here is that every bit of advice you take from me will lead to more books being sold. If you write a series, people might buy the whole thing, as Lord of Columbia will be one day with at least seven planned books.


For instance, you can have a blog based on writing, another blog based on themes from your own book, a book review blog, and other blogs related to your book. If you drove traffic to all these blogs utilizing keywords and taking over Google’s algorithms, you too can sell a lot of books without paying a penny in paid promotion.


Sure, owning a blog costs money and if you want to blog the correct way, a keyword tool is a must and affiliate programs are added bonuses. However, it’s rather cheap, and Wealthy Affiliate is one educational program that will teach you how to do this better in a month than any four-year college course will over the course of four years.


Plus, it costs about as much as two one-semester credit hours per year with people who care about your work.



Speaking of Blogs

Oh, and as an added bonus, you can even own blogs that are outside of your book’s niche. If you love sports or political news, you have a blog right there. If you’re crafty in any craft or trade, you have another blog there.


And if you want, you can write books centered around those blogs, hence reaching more people with different interests and utilizing the same tactics I’ve shown you in the above sections and paragraphs.


And best yet, as you continue to build out your blogs you can write full-time for a living. Imagine working at home, in coffee shops, in libraries (my personal favorite), in parks, and wherever else you can think of.



Imagine Freedom

Imagine not having to be held accountable to be stuck at the office in a cubicle at specific set times. Think of the freedom you’ll have by setting your own schedule, work venue, fueling your own dream, and becoming self-made.


We’ve been conditioned into thinking this is a myth. We’ve been taught, or many of us have been taught that to make a living you have to work on someone else’s time, making a lot of money for them or a company. In other words, making a lot of money for someone else who is only keeping you around because it’s costing them less to keep you around.


Now, imagine breaking free of these bonds, these chains, and embarking on your own journey where you can become full-time doing what you love to do without submitting to a boss.


Imagine being free.