This year, I wrote nearly 280 articles. I technically started writing these articles over a year ago, but I only went full-time in April of last year. Since then, life has been a blur. It’s been a year of intense grind, and I’ve barely made any progress. I have a small social media following, and dead website.
And yet, I’m still not discouraged. The amount of money being made as I grind is not to be understated. I’m already getting a decent amount of traffic from Medium, and search engines (while not as useful as they used to be) are bound to pick up my articles as they draw links.
Soon, I’ll have a critical mass of posts. Enough that I’ll not only be paying for my own living, but I’ll also be able to save money without doing any work. Or I’ll be able to start a service-based business. But I realized none of that can happen if I give up now. If I give up now, I might be able to live comfortably in the countryside, but not much else. But if I continue, I have a shot at living the peak human experience. Here’s how I realized you need to put in multiple years to see the real gains.
One year of work = just enough to start seeing results
I wrote nearly 280 articles in a year. If each of those articles is worth $2.50/month to me, then I’ll be earning $700 per month from them. Not a bad start, at all. The ability to grow this income will be massive for me too. I can start a YouTube channel, get a job and use the money from the job to promote it. Anything. I won’t be rich off of my efforts, but the year hasn’t been badly spent. Better than sitting around doing nothing.
Two years of work = exponential growth
Given that I wrote 280 articles in a year, if I were to write for another year, I would double my monthly income to $1,400, at least. This might not sound like a huge deal to those living in places like the United States, but earning $1,400/ month vs $700/month in a country like mine represents a massive change in standards of living. At $1,400/month, you can buy a car of some sort. Elective healthcare procedures become an option. Life improves dramatically. I will definitely be putting in another year’s work and expanding my catalogue. I’m itching to experience those benefits.
Three years of work = top 20%
After 3 years, I can have written 750 articles. Or, I can have diversified into YouTube and other forms of social media. I could be earning more than $2,100/month and living on $1,000. All the rest of the money would go towards securing a home and future for myself. It’s not much, but it’s better than what the average American can hope for. My country’s cheap. I’ll have more purchasing power than them, along with more in savings.
5 years, sky is the limit
People aren’t really able to project 5 years into the future very well. They don’t see the effects of compounding and exponential growth well in their mind’s eye. So, they think that it’s really hard to make a good return on the time that they invest into their hopes and dreams. They don’t know how wrong they are. After 5 years of real effort, you’re either an industry leader or a complete failure. Hopefully you know whent to quit early. Usually though, people who stick to something for 5 years only fail if the field is low-paid.
Look for little wins
You need to be scoring little wins with you work, otherwise it isn’t worthwhile. Little wins can be anything. People following your blog, people commenting, any traffic at all. Whatever works to make you reasonably believe that you’re getting ahead. Just make sure it’s a reasonable belief. One listener on Spotify, for someone living in Hong Kong, does not equate to a reasonable belief.
Do the realistic math
Don’t let this article make you believe that I’m saying you can easily get rich within 1 year. I’m saying that the outcomes associated with one year of blitzing your work are far less intense than those that are associated with long term effort. Don’t delude yourself. Just remember that there is likely gold at the end of the rainbow.
The real point, don’t give up too soon
You probably don’t realize how well you’re already doing, provided that you’re working. It takes a lot of effort to get started, and it can feel like nothing is happening at all. I only realized how much good I had done for myself in the last year when I published 50 articles to Medium and started to get traffic, knowing that that’s not even 1/10th of my catalogue. I could have given up when I didn’t see my website automatically getting traffic from Google. Or when I was banned from Medium because I was posting too much and triggered the spam filter.
One year of hard work usually isn’t enough. There’s a chance I could end up earning $5/month for every article, but who knows? That’s not industry standard, althought the other blogs I’m comparing myself to are also young. What I do know, is that you can achieve a lot in one year, and after 5, your life can be unrecognizable. You just need to know how to recognize little wins and not give up too early. Realize what you have and go for it. Realize you need multiple years to achieve anything worthwhile and go for it. Your life will change dramatically once your patient enough to realize that and take the appropriate time to grind hard and find success. You should be satisfied as long as your expectations are reasonable, and you work hard.
Thanks for paying attention.
