How to Make Money Writing... Without Selling Your Work

We writers are an interesting bunch: we love writing and we want to make a living from our writing, but we don't actually want to sell our work.

The idea of querying agents, editors, or publishers is dreaded. And how not? The industry is such that even already published authors receive more rejections than acceptances. If you're trying to break in... well, it's worse.

There are so many people competing for attention, that chances are we'll just receive a boiler plate rejection letter that hasn't even been signed. Did the person at the other end even read past the first sentence of our work?

And even if your book is picked up, gone are the days when the publishing houses could afford to handle all the marketing and turn you into an overnight bestseller. Chances are you'll be on your own when it comes to selling your book to readers--and your paltry royalty percentage doesn't go up even though you're responsible for the brunt of the work.

Even writers who want to freelance are having a hard time finding work in this economy. When businesses have to cut costs, they go back to doing work in-house instead of outsourcing.

And what if you're just an introvert at heart, and you're not comfortable trying to sell your work or your services to people? Selling has always seemed tailor made for the extravert, the person who thrives on interactions with other people, but the truth is selling is something most of us are uncomfortable with.

Selling may be an integral part (many will argue it's the most important part) of a business, but it's hard to visualize your writing--your art--as a business sometimes.

What if there were a way you could make a living from your writing without having to "sell" your work?

Up until the Internet, you didn't have much choice. Today, though, there's another paradigm.

You can write for yourself, publish your work to the web on your own website or blog, and take in money by displaying ads next to your writing. You don't have to sell anything.