How to Drive Yourself Nutz with a Writing Project

My 19-year-old grandson said, “If you want to make a fortune, publish a course online” — wrong

DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR

You know I like to help other writers avoid the pitfalls of learning to earn a living with their words. I enjoyed teaching back in the day. I’m good at explaining complicated concepts. Well, then I’d be a natural to write a course on how to establish revenue streams as a writer. Right? Hold on a minute.

I’m an outstanding, experienced writer (humble, too). My newsletters, publications, and stories have nearly 10,000 followers across the web, and in real life, I’m a top writer on two platforms and a Substack Bestseller. I figured I could crank out a magnificent course about making money by writing — piece o’cake.

Wrong.

How I nearly lost my mind compiling a substantive course

I believe in value-added.

I have seen many, many online courses priced anywhere from $27 to $2700, and I’ve seen few that offered real value or dove deeper than, “Write what you know” or “Avoid passive voice” or “Write everyday and post to every venue on the internet — even if you write crap filled with errors.” No way, Ray.

I began an outline — no sweat — in fact, Gemini (Horrors! A BOT!) assisted with the outline so I could include a bit of what I had already written, and also develop new, fresh material.

That went pretty well. It took way longer than I anticipated. I figure a week or two. The writing actually took almost two months. But it was worth it. Quality. Actionable. Real strategies. Then I had to gather illustrations — yeah, I had kind of forgotten about that. Add another two weeks.

At this point, I’m beginning to feel stressed. My partner suggested we add a few simple videos. Videos? What do I know about videos? And then there’s the platform to deploy the course on. Took me a week to choose one — Substack? Coursera? Payhip? An email campaign. Arrgghhh!!!

I finally chose Systeme.io because it’s the Swiss Army knife of web tools. I can publish courses, a website, sales funnels, affiliate programs, a blog, and on and on. But the learning curve is murder, and that’s where I completely lost my mind.

I was going to breeze right through and have a course up in a few days. No, my friends. I had to slowwwww wayyyy downnnn and deliberately take one baby step at a time. Had to learn their editor, their rules for custom URLs, and a dozen other complicated things. I opted to take a course from them that certified me as a Systeme certified expert. I am not that.

As we waded through all of this technology and course-convention stuff, my partner and I nearly murdered each other several times. We threw in the towel at least once a week, vowing to never do a web project again as long as we lived. I almost stopped writing on Substack and Medium because I was working on the course eight hours a day, seven days a week.

And then what happened?

I am at the point of final proofing now, having polished ten modules, each containing three to five lessons. The course is the equivalent of a college course in growing an audience and monetizing your writing skills. There are great illustrations, in-depth lessons, really cool videos (yep, I mastered the art of videos, kinda), quizzes, and a certificate upon completion.

We worked out the best way to give students direct access to the instructor anytime they need or want help or input.

In the past, I taught college-level writing and wrote curricula — I’m pretty confident this series is on that level. I am certain the lessons and strategies are valuable and vastly different from the get-rich-quick online “courses” that fail to generate income for anyone but the purveyor.

Now, having vented to you all, I’m getting back to writing regularly for the almost 10,000 people who follow me on various platforms. I’m working my usual 3.5-hour days and feeling much less stressed. My partner and I called a truce and decided three videos and an AI-generated picture are no reason to get a divorce. All is well.

Will I ever do another course? My grandson was wrong (he gets his info from Discord, anyway), and though this course is doing well in presales, and people are liking the sample lessons a lot, it won’t make anyone a fortune. That’s fine — my goal is to empower writers — money is cool, but not my main motivator.

No, I probably will not do it again. Let’s say the course is a collector’s item that my ever-growing cadre of students are enjoying and benefiting from. If you’re interested in exploring the idea and seeing new ways to power up your writing revenue, I offer the place to start. Click here Write-Earn-Repeat.

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