I started my blog as an independent new writer in 2015. Over the years, I’ve published over 400 articles, 7 books, and 7 online courses.
There have been frustrations and challenges along the way. But I’ve learned that new writers have a better chance of success when they avoid common mistakes and follow “best practices” from the start.
“Success” can mean different things. To me, it’s about making a good living. Not necessarily to get rich (which is also great, but not the primary goal).
Here are 5 important lessons I’ve learned about success as a writer. These things might sound obvious, but I wouldn’t overlook them. Success is often simpler than we think.
Welcome to Wise & Wealthy: A weekly newsletter full of proven ideas to become smarter and wealthier. I send this every Monday and every other Thursday.
Your career usually takes up at least 35% of your waking hours. And that’s when you work 8 hours a day from Monday through Friday.
That’s without the time we spend getting ready for work, thinking about work, or the extra time we put in. For most of us, our career takes up 50% of our time!
Since we can never get back the time we spend, it only makes sense to have a career that you actually enjoy.
And to make that happen, we must make a choice to say yes to our passion and no to everything else. At least, for a while until we have a satisfying career.
I can say from personal experience that having work you love is one of the most rewarding things in life.
If that’s not something you have right now, I want to encourage you to start working on it. Maybe it takes years to make it happen, but it’s worth the effort.
20 years ago, being able to get rich as a fully-independent writer would’ve been close to impossible. Technology and the internet changed that.
But since everyone can write online it’s not only competitive, it’s also very crowded.
The key is to be different than everyone else. As readers, we usually don’t care about who’s a better writer. We care about who has a different perspective or style.
And as a writer, your goal is to always prioritize being different. That’s how you can stand out from the crowd.
When you stand out, you usually get better rewards, and when you invest those monetary rewards, you can become rich.
I’m currently working on creating new content for my writing course, Effective Writing. One of the simplest ideas of the course is to remove unnecessary words from your writing.
The more fluff, the less clarity. And less clarity means we lose the attention of our reader.
A quick solution? Remove words like “that” and “just” as often as you can. Your writing will be much smoother and to the point.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this edition of Wise & Wealthy useful.
All the best,
Darius
Join the 7-day Stay Centered challenge
I’ve created a one-week email course that you can do together with a group. It’s called Stay Centered, and it will help you to reclaim focus and live a meaningful life.
When you’re centered, nothing can hurt you. You will have inner peace no matter what happens.
How to unlock Stay Centered
You can join the challenge for free. Every day, you’ll receive a short email with a small challenge that inspires you to live better.
I highly recommend sharing it with your friends so you can go through the program together. I did it with my team, which was a lot of fun.
20 years ago, being able to get rich as a fully-independent writer would’ve been close to impossible. Today’s technology and the internet changed all that.
But that also means more people can access these opportunities. Everyone can post online, which is what makes it also competitive.
But with the right strategy and dedication, it’s definitely doable to earn a good living. I started blogging in 2015. About three years later, I started generating six figures of profit a year. I’ve used that profit to invest and generate a net worth of seven figures.
I share this to say it’s possible. You can get rich as a writer. And to be honest, you can get rich in any profession if you’re serious about learning the skills you need to succeed.
The tips I’m about to share aren’t get-rich-quick fixes. These things take serious work and commitment.
Welcome to Wise & Wealthy: A weekly newsletter full of proven ideas to become smarter and wealthier. I send this every Monday and every other Thursday.
What’s something you want to do in your life but you’re putting off until later?
“One day I’m going to start with investing.” When is one day? It’s more likely we’re not going to start at all.
When you live your life like that, one day you’ll look back and think, “Where did my time go? I haven’t done anything I said I would.”
That’s not a good feeling. I was on that path myself. And when I saw my grandmother pass away with many feelings of regret, I decided to change my lifestyle.
I looked at procrastination as my biggest enemy in life. I aimed to become someone who does what they say. I started small and kept living like that.
When you never procrastinate on the biggest things in life, you will never feel any regret. It’s a very peaceful way to live.
A common theme of philosophy is that happiness comes when we let it go. When we try hard to be happy, we often end up having the opposite.
One of my favorite philosophical books on the concept of letting go is Solitude: A Return to the Self by the English psychiatrist Anthony Storr.
It’s really a fascinating book about self-knowledge and the importance of being comfortable with your own thoughts. The book is from 1988, but I think it’s more relevant now than ever.
Here’s a quote from Storr:
“With few exceptions, psychotherapists have omitted to consider the fact that the capacity to be alone is also an aspect of emotional maturity.”
So how does this relate to being wealthy? Well, we need the same kind of emotional maturity to be happy and to be wealthy.
A key lesson about living a good life is not to force things. It’s easier to build wealth when we’re comfortable walking away from it at any given moment.
This is from the book, Already Free, by psychotherapist Bruce Tift:
“Another word for doing practices we don’t want to do is discipline. That’s not a favorite word in our culture, but I find the discipline to be essential in addressing these difficult, embedded patterns we all enter adulthood with.”
With better discipline, we can free our minds and focus on things that matter to us.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this edition of Wise & Wealthy useful.
All the best,
Darius
Join the 7-day Stay Centered challenge
I’ve created a one-week email course that you can do together with a group. It’s called Stay Centered, and it will help you to reclaim focus and live a meaningful life.
When you’re centered, nothing can hurt you. You will have inner peace no matter what happens.
How to unlock Stay Centered
You can join the challenge for free. Every day, you’ll receive a short email with a small challenge that inspires you to live better.
I highly recommend sharing it with your friends so you can go through the program together. I did it with my team, which was a lot of fun.
