About a year ago I got the idea for an experiment. I wanted to answer a simple question: what does it take to make a living as a writer?

I’m an English professor at a small college in Arizona and I have no intention of leaving my job, but it bothered me that I didn’t have an answer to the question. I also wanted to know if I could do it myself. So, I decided to find out.

No one expects me to do this. Almost all of my students take my courses on their way to earning other degrees. They plan on going into nursing or business or education. They are only taking English, because they have to.

My boss doesn’t expect my students to write best sellers or to win Pulitzer Prizes. It’s just not in my job description.

I tell my students that the purpose of my classes isn’t to teach them how to write an essay or a research paper—it’s to teach them how to think critically. I frame the course that way, so they feel like there is something in it for them, even if they don’t expect to write essays in their chosen fields. But what if they could make money writing? That could give them more incentive. It would provide more value.

I decided that the best way to answer the question was to do it myself. So, I started to research.

Nicolas Cole, the author of The Art and Business of Online Writing, says that the fastest way to become a professional writer is to become a ghost writer. You don’t have to build a large audience, because you just need to find someone willing to pay you to do the writing they don’t have the time or skill to do. It makes sense, but I don’t want to cold call small businesses or take on clients. Not right now anyway.

I want to write books. Lots and lots of book. I want to write nonfiction, poetry, memoir, and fiction. I want to do it all!

And I can! There has never been a better time to be a writer. You don’t need to query agents and editors or pound on the doors of the establishment to find someone to publish your work, because you can just do it yourself! If I had a manuscript ready, I could create an account on Amazon and publish my book today—for free!

But who would read it? How would they even know it’s available?

Sure, someone might stumble into my work after sifting through pages and pages of other books. That might be okay if I just wanted to write for a hobby, but that’s not a winning business plan.

So, I started to research business and marketing. I read Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. From there I found his other books, Marketing Made Simple and Business Made Simple. It gave me confidence and a roadmap to promote my writing as a business.

Conventional wisdom on YouTube, and other outlets, is that every writer needs a newsletter. It gives you direct access to readers, it’s what Nicolas Cole calls an “attention engine”, but I don’t have any readers yet.

I knew that I needed to find a way to provide my readers that same kind of value I wanted to provide my students. By doing that, I could build a community of readers that were willing to read what I have to write. But what would I write? What value could I share with them?

So, I wrote out my StoryBrand and I cycled back to my ideas over and over again. In the end, my pitch is simple:

• I am going to help writers that want to write for a living.
• I am going to teach them how to write, encourage them to do it, and model the process through my own journey and writing.

I don’t have an audience that will subscribe to a newsletter because they love my writing. They don’t know my writing. But, if I could help them to gain the confidence to do the writing they want to do, then they would have a reason to keep coming back.

Now that I had a plan, I needed to figure out how to market it.

So, I am starting this newsletter. I am also starting a podcast and a YouTube channel. I am sharing everything I publish through social media. I created a website to be the hub for everything. And, I am going to (try) to be patient as I start the long journey to break through the noise.

If you are reading this, thank you. I hope that I can help you to gain the confidence to write. I hope that I can show you how to do it—because you can.

It may not be easy, but it is possible. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m working on it. Together, we’ll be able to figure this out and yes, we’ll both learn how to make a living as a writer.

Thanks for reading. I’ll talk to you next week.

—Jacob