Mike Fook Books – Ebooks | Fiction Thrillers | WTF

Living in Thailand now for the last six years, you’re probably tired of me saying.

I’ve been just working online for the past three years. It has been nice not needing to go to a 9-5 job, and I’ve been able to improve my writing by whole letter grades over this time. I’ve written millions of words in the last 3 years and I am feeling more comfortable writing than I ever have.

Recently I decided to really start paying off bills back in the USA and this has led to a decision that must be made.

Teach Thai kids or adults English, or, write a lot more and find the right niche that makes me happy and makes me money.

Teaching English in Thailand I can make anywhere from $1,000 to $1,300 from a 9-5 job and another few hundred per month if I wanted to teach extra classes at my house on the weekends. That’s enough to pay off my bills in the US and we can survive on the other income that comes in online like magic. LOL.

Teaching English is not bad. I enjoyed it for 2 years. I taught many extra classes too and I had a blast. I like teaching the 5-8 year olds. They are gems. We sing English songs in class. How cool is that? I work them up into a frenzy and we’re all screaming the song. It’s really a great time. I video taped it one time, gotta make a note to find that – it’s riotous.

Teaching English is not getting me anywhere. There are small pay raises of $100 per month each year teachers continue with the same school. The ceiling is about $1,500 per month outside of Bangkok. I abhor Bangkok, I’d never live there – so the max I could make teaching is about $1,500. If I taught I would be totally stagnating because then I’m not writing 3,000-5,000 words per day like I normally do. That’s a big step backward.

If I teach English for 2 years and stop. I have nothing coming in anymore. I only get money as I’m working as a teacher and spending hours everyday teaching. If not – no income.

Compare that to writing books.

If I write a book in 2 weeks, and another in 2 more weeks – that’s 2 books in a month. Those two books will earn me about $150 per month (minimum) for a long time. If I write 2 books and stop, I have income for the next few years at least. In 3 years I can earn $5,400 just from working one month. That’s not bad. It doesn’t stop there either. If the books are good they will continue to earn cash for many years online as far as anyone can foresee.

But, that’s not all. All of those people that read those two books now know who I am. Some of them are looking for more of my books. I’ll sell other books to the same people. Today a guy bought 3 of my books from my site and a woman bought 2. Another woman bought 1 and a guy bought 1. I get the lead information from them – unlike those sold at Amazon or elsewhere. I know nothing about those people.

Say I write 20 books in a year. Those twenty books are going to earn me $75 per month each on average (minimum). That’s $1,500 per month x 12 months = $18,000 per year. If I stop writing then, I will still make about the same over the next couple years for doing nothing. I can travel the world and write if I wish. If I keep writing – another 20 books the next year, that’s another $1,500 per month on top of the first $1,500 per month and then I’d be making $3,000 per month. Getting better, right? Write 40 decent books and you can have the same income.

To some people, writing 40 books in 2 years seems like a massive goal. To me it seems like nothing. Ebooks are not 80,000 words – or, shouldn’t be. Or, needn’t be. Sometimes I put word-count in my book descriptions and other times not. Nobody has ever emailed me and asked, “Hey man, why aren’t you putting the word count somewhere so we can decide if buying your book is worth it?”

Nobody.

Teaching isn’t scalable. Writing books, writing scripts, writing songs, shooting video for YouTube… these things are all scalable. You need do nothing more than finish them, get them live on a pay-site and wait for the money to arrive in your account.

There are few things that can compare with writing books and making residual income, you need to do nothing for in the future. If I could think of a better one – I’d be doing it.

Making YouTube videos has almost taken me from writing on a couple different occasions. They also continually make money whether you’re shooting more videos or not. Making one video is much easier than writing one book. However, it’s too hard to judge how much each video will make. I have a video that made us $900 in a couple years and I have a video that made us $3. It’s too hard to judge which ones will make bank and which won’t.

Books are easier to judge.

What will I be doing – teaching, or writing?

What would you do?

Freelance writers don’t know where to focus.

Look at the long-term.

Do you want to:

1. Write for someone else the rest of your life?

2. Write for yourself for the rest of your life?

From there it gets really easy what you should be focusing on. I’m going to guess than NOBODY wants to write for someone else the rest of their lives. There are people that do, but they are anomalies and we don’t care about them. We care about us, and WE want to write for ourselves because… well, we’re all sorts of intelligent over here in this camp.

What is the path to being able to write for yourself as a long-term goal?

There are many paths, this is the one I’m suggesting everyone jump on as fast as you can.

1. Take a pulling-no-punches look at yourself. Are you a writer? Can you write? Have others said they LOVE how you write? Have you written something that has been read many times – 1,000? 10,000? 1 million times? Did you get great feedback on it? Or, are you someone that is dedicated to becoming a great writer?

There are writers that have it already, and there are writers that can get it after a lot of work. If you’re not one of those two people, choose another profession.

2. Forget writing articles that you hope to sell. It isn’t scalable. By writing one article and shopping it around, you are wasting heaps of time that you could be spending doing other things that are more productive.

3. Do write articles that get you noticed. Find top bloggers that are in the same niche that you want to write about. Create 5 titles of provocative, new, or cool articles that you offer to the blog owner and ask her if you could write one of them as a guest blogger there. Be ready to show prior articles as samples of your writing. Ideally you’d have your own blog, but not really necessary.

Write the hell out of that article and submit it. Your story will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people over time. And, you’ll get a link back to your website where you can start building a list of email subscribers using Aweber.com’s list-building service.

4. Write your own books. The world of book writing has just changed remarkably. Today I can write a 15,000 word book and sell it for $9.95 at Amazon or $29.95 at Clickbank.com or websites across the world if it’s a groundbreaking book with more information than anyone else has on a small niche topic.

When I say, “Write your own books” – I mean ebooks. Books, paper books, are dead. Don’t write another paper book in your life. Paper books are old, they are too long, they are a waste of paper, time, money, ideas, and they’re not the future. Switch now.

5. Keep writing your own books and selling them. Try hard to know who your customers are so you can send them notices of future books being released – which they may also buy. Build your brand. The more people that hear about you – the better you’ll do. You can do well being an asshole or a saint. You should probably choose which – now.

If you are going to be a writer, write for yourself. There is nothing more rewarding in life – career wise, than producing something unique and having other people that appreciate it – buy it.

Writing your own books and putting them up for sale gives you residual income where you are doing nothing but watching sales come into your email box. It makes for a glorious day when I wake up in the morning after 7 hours of sleep and see 10 book sales in my email. What makes it better is knowing that I’ll continue to get sales for the next couple years off those same books. The rate of sales may increase or decrease – but, I’ll make sales. Also, I know I can do many things to increase the rate of sales… it’s within my power to make myself a winner.

Strive to be a writer for yourself – not for corporations, not for search engines.