How Effort Can Equal Reward in a Writer’s World
Not totally a crapshoot
Not totally a crapshoot
Some people work at jobs where they get paid an hourly wage for their work. Their wristwatch or the company time clock can pretty well predict how much money they can expect when they do get paid.
Form of pay
Other people work on commission or a form of commission. Predicting the size of their paycheck may be a little harder.
The first type of individual may say, in order to make $100, I need to work X number of hours.
The second person uses a different yardstick to measure their worth. But there is still a way to predict the amount of work needed to earn X number of dollars.
In the last scenario, the person could say last month or for the last three months, I talked to X number of people — new people, prospects to buy whatever I am selling. After I did that, I earned X number of dollars. Then divide it out to find that I statistically made X number of dollars for each prospect I talked to.
Next month
Therefore next month, if I talk to the same number of people I can expect to make the same amount.
Each prospect I talk to is worth X dollars. I could talk to more people if I wanted to make more money.
You could do essentially the same with writing. If writing X number of stories yielded you $X, then you could divide out the number of stories and discover their worth individually.
This is going to vary some because your number of finished pieces of work product continues to increase. But sometimes pay systems change. And the length, and popularity along with a couple of other variables enter in.
What is each story worth to you?
The bottom line is to compute the amount each story is worth to you. Then take your desired income and divide it to get the number of stories necessary to achieve it.
This, of course, does not count, in advance, any prizes or other sources of income which would only add to your speed of attaining your goal.
Set your goal and know what it will take to achieve it. You will have to tweak your formula over a month or two, but soon you'll get pretty accurate.
And also, you can start with using some other writers’ stories and numbers, but just for an experiment. Always use your own figures for your own money goals.
For now, thank you for your time. (my profile — Twitter)
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