Ways to Make Money Before the Call || Chris Redding's ALONG CAME PAULY

A contemporary romance about a dog that brings two people together who don't want to be. She's a vegetarian veterinarian who needs cash for a no-kill shelter. He's the heir to a hot dog fortune who must give away money before he gains his inheritance. Sounds like a perfect match. It isn't.

Available for purchase on: 

Amazon

Ways to Make Money Before the Call

(or before you hit it big if you are self-publishing)

My DH is a bottom line kind of guy. If he can't see it on a spreadsheet, it is hard for him to understand it. I'm not going to change him and since I love him and he's a really good guy I'm not going anywhere.

So in order to keep my writing career going I needed to figure out how to bring in some money before my books brought in some money.

You have several options.

Teaching writing workshops is a great idea for bringing in some cash. I actually fell into teaching workshops. I'd done an article about Writing the Male Point of View. Two people who I had worked with earlier in my career approached me to make it into a workshop. It is still my most popular one.

To be successful, you need to have several workshops that you can offer a writing group. I now have four that I propose on a regular basis and some years I will put one of them on the back burner.

Several places online offer writing workshops and you can pitch to them usually near the end of the year for the following year. I teach for www.onlinerwritersworkshops.com and www.savvyauthors.com. A lot of the Romance Writers of America Chapters offer online courses also. You will have to do some legwork to find out which ones and how to pitch to them.

Several times I've branched out into in person workshops. Local libraries are always looking for new interesting speakers to have. Most libraries have a budget and will pay you a stipend. If they don't, you can use it to pad your resume when you offer your services elsewhere.

Another possibility is lots of colleges have Lifelong Learning Institutes. These are geared towards retired people who want to keep on learning. You will get paid for this also.

If you have editing skills, which sadly, I don't feel mine are good enough, you can hang out your editing shingle. With so many authors self-publishing, there is such a need for quality authors. Mine charges $1 per page and she is worth every penny. Some charge more. Some charge per word. If you're good at editing, you can make some money on the side.

Freelance writing is also a way to bring some dough into the house. Some of these sites offer long term jobs and short term jobs. The assignments range from writing article for SEO (search engine optimization). These aren't the highest paying jobs, but if you are good at it, you can plow through the writing. Just Google freelance writing jobs. I can't specifically recommend a site because I haven't tried this.

Besides freelance writing, there are other freelance and virtual sites that offer short and long term jobs. www.flexjobs.com is one of them. www.oDesk.com is another. With oDesk you have several categories of jobs you can look for including virtual assistant jobs and writing assignments. I've taken on several work for hire assignments through this website.

All of the above take some legwork and you may not want to take time from your writing, but sometimes that paycheck is necessary. If you have kids, you will appreciate the flexibility. Hopefully I've given you some places to get started.

Thanks for having me today.

cmr

Chris Redding lives in New Jersey with her husband, two sons, one dog and three rabbits.  She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. When she isn’t writing, she works for her local hospital Her books are filled with romance, suspense and thrills.

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