Do you keep track of your monthly writing income?

Posted by Allison on Jun 8, 2010 in Selling and profiting from your own articles |

How important is your writing income to you?

Knowing how much writing income you earn from your online writing (or any other writing you do, come to that) is exceptionally important. You may not be so worried about it if you only write part time for some extra cash. But if you want to turn that part time income into a full time writing income, you’ll certainly need to know what direction you are going in.

Important things to consider as a full timer with regard to writing income

Is your writing income heading in the right direction?

If you are a full time writer it is even more important to know what your writing income is each month. I’m not saying this because it is imperative you should earn more with each and every month that passes, because this isn’t necessarily the case. I always try to increase my writing income in different ways each week, and for the most part I do manage that. But if there happens to be a week when my earnings go down for some reason, I don’t get too hung up on it. There is more to life than money and freelancing, after all.

The task of monitoring your writing income

But with that said I do always focus on making a note of how much I earn on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. I always want to be sure I am bringing in more than enough to pay all the bills and get the quality of life I never had when I was working as an employee for someone else.

And since I always jot these figures down in my diary (I always keep a diary and have done for several years) I can look back and see whether I am doing better now than I was, say, this time last year or even two or three years ago.

Keeping track of your writing income is important in lots of different ways. Primarily I can make sure I am earning enough each day to pay the bills. In addition to this I can see how well I am doing when compared with the same time last year. And I can also prevent myself from having unnecessary worries.

Peaks and troughs

For instance certain times of the year are invariably a bit quieter than others. The run up to Christmas is notorious for going this way, although since my partner and I also have an eBay business this actually works really well. I get less writing to do and more time to help pack up dozens of orders on a daily basis!

So if I get a quiet time the first thing I do is look back on the previous year to see whether my writing income was the same back then as well. More often than not it turns out to be just like that.

It’s up to you how closely you monitor your writing income for your own personal reasons. We’re not talking about how much tax you should pay on it, or anything else official like that. We’re just talking about the things you personally need to know, such as whether you are hitting the goal you set for yourself for bringing in a certain amount of writing income each day, week or month from your writing.

Find out more about goal setting for writers

If you want to know more about goal setting in writing, go to that section of my blog to read more information and ideas. And don’t forget, you are in charge of your income as a writer. If you aren’t happy with it, go all out to increase it. And if you are happy, good for you! Only you know what level of writing income will make you truly happy.