Although anyone can write, the marketplace has a way of quickly separating out those who convince their readers from those who simply jumble words onto a page.
For those who love to write - and who love to learn writing - the Internet is a vast universe of possibilities, and it's just in its infancy.
To learn - that is the key. The web changes rapidly, styles and strategies that worked two years ago, may be useless today.
Consider this: I have a Master's degree in Education. For me to get a Doctorate in Education, I would pay out around $2000 per course. I need 20 courses. In the end, I would be eligible for a job paying $60-80,000 a year. (That doesn't mean I would land such a job). But if I do not complete the doctorate, all of what I spend will be worthless. And even if I complete it, many of the hours spent and much money paid out would still have been wasted.
Yet that scam gets people lined up by the thousands. Why don't they ever call it a scam? I'm getting sidetracked here.
What is my point?
What if, instead of buying that first Doctoral course, I allocated the same $2000 to purchasing Internet marketing and ebooks and courses and strategies. And what if I did my homework, made what I learned my own, and applied it all online?
Would some of my money be wasted on outdated or useless material? Undoubtedly!
Would some of what I buy turn out to be fluff and hype and a waste of money? Most certainly!
But would it be any different from half the stuff presented as "sober and crucial" in the Doctor of Education program? Not a bit.
There is a huge difference here, though. Most of what I learn in the graduate school course is theory to be applied in one of the most fake environments our society has created - the public school classroom. And you get to discover whether it "works" or not by the test scores at the end of the year.
But when you buy ebooks and courses on writing to make a living online, you learn very quickly in the real world, what works and what doesn't. Before long, you have thrown out all the nonsense and adapted all that's good to your own style and niche.
And then there is the real question.
Can I leverage what I learn from my $2000 of online purchases into an income of $80,000 a year? Many people are. You sense everywhere the concern - be careful of all those "How to Make Money on the Internet" offers. A lot of them are just scams!
Undoubtedly. But a lot of what you get from a graduate school is a scam just as surely. But here is the difference. If I plunk down my hard-earned money on an eBook and find that it is poorly written nonsense, most of the time, I can get my money back. (And be careful of programs that do not offer a clearly visible and cheerful money back guarantee.)
Try going to the graduate school after taking a course you deem pointless and see if they will give you your money back. Shouldn't they be required to? In the real world, they would!
If you are serious about learning, there is no money wasted when you buy products that teach you about making a living on the Internet. Apply what you learn, fail quickly, change what you're doing, and keep on going. Weed out what doesn't work and build on what does.
There is a world out there to conquer. And the writer who learns it can only win.
You have a story to tell, articles to write, college to conquer, or a business to sell. You know that success requires great writing. You plan to learn to write well. You're already a great writer. Remove the blockages, the fears of making a mistake and just write. Then, send your drafts to your editor at The Writing Conservatory. You will learn to write well. Guaranteed!
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