Inc Authority
Let me type the most hypocritical sentence of my life.
It is bad advice to tell people to turn their passion into a career, especially if they are talented enough to do so.
Yes, I say this as someone who 1) loves to write and 2) makes a living by, you guessed, writing.
Please stay with me as I explain.
Although most of my work is “writing” or activities related to writing, they are not all passion-driven projects.
Exec Sum is my day job. I am paid every two weeks for a sometimes boring but necessary task of preparing a financial newsletter. This includes everything from VC deals to mergers and purchases to earnings summaries. It’s not glamorous to edit a newsletter, and at times it can get pretty boring. But I get paid well for my job.
Every quarter, I offer a live course based on a cohort about growing and monetizing a newsletter. It’s hard to teach a class, let alone a live one. I want to provide a valuable course to those who pay for it, so I have to be up to date on the best practices. I also need to be able to respond to all questions regarding the newsletter. In the weeks before the launch, I must also market the course and handle numerous administrative tasks. It can be difficult and stressful to teach a course. But I get paid well for my job.
It’s not as if money appears magically in my account each time I click publish. This blog is monetized through ads. Ad sales is a tedious process. You must reach out and negotiate with sponsors. You also have to help write ad copy and send campaign summaries. Sponsors can sometimes cancel at the last moment or fail to pay their invoices. You may not agree on the price or placements. You may fall behind in ad sales, and you’ll have to work hard to fill up the slots for the following weeks. Although selling ads isn’t enjoyable, I get paid well.
My travel blog , which details my adventures while backpacking abroad, is a passion project. I haven’t earned a penny from it.
Travel blogging is a profitable business. Affiliate agreements with hotels, hostels and travel agencies are quite lucrative. You can create communities that pay for digital nomads. You can sell travel guidebooks for different regions of the world. I also know I’m wasting money by not monetizing my blog.
I don’t think my travel blog should be considered a business. I don’t care about optimizing it for web traffic, affiliate conversions or anything else. I want to tell the story of drinking sake with my friends at a Kyoto Sumo wrestling tournament so that we can laugh five years down the road.
As I sell advertising on Young Money I am fortunate to be able to write whatever I want. From existential musings on the importance of entropy in our lives, to my thoughts about the hierarchy for “wealth.”
I’ve never published anything that I didn’t want to publish. I have never had an editor soften the tone of an article. I have never had a sponsored influence the content. I also never optimized an article for “clicks” and “monetization”.
I have had a lot of creative freedom with my writing because my career or, at least, the way I make a living is not related to my writing.
It’s not realistic to “pursue passion” as a way to earn a living, especially when you’re just starting out. Rather than increasing the likelihood of career satisfaction, “pursuing passion as a profession” often forces one to compromise their passion in order to make money.
The secret to success, particularly as a creator, is a combination of talent and luck. You do need to have (or acquire) a certain level of skill to earn a living from a creative endeavor. There are no good entry-level salaries in the arts, unlike finance. You may not earn a penny from your art for years, or even never.
A stream of income unrelated to your passion can be very valuable. It allows luck and time to work for you.
The more you practice, experiment, and improve your craft, without having to worry about generating a return on investment, the better it will be and the more chances you will have to show off your work.
If you want to make money from your art immediately, you may be more willing to compromise your style or freedom to get there sooner.
It’s not a prerequisite that you can’t develop your craft while holding down a job. J.K. Rowling began writing Harry Potter as a teacher while living in Portugal. Ernest Hemingway worked as a foreign correspondent at the Toronto Star Weekly in 1926 when his first novel, Three Stories & Ten Poems was published.
It’s not necessary ( and probably isn’t ) to go all-in with your art right from the start. And there’s no bonus for artists who struggle in the early stages of their career. Separate your art from your career for a little while. You’ll be rewarded with both creativity and a healthy bank account.
