Losing Money Yet Still Succeeding...HOW?

[McRiley]

Like in any business path, you will face challenges and shortcomings. And this includes losing money. How can you expect reward without some sort of risks?


This is my first post so a little about me. I’m a dropout college student who was half way through in getting my BS degree. I currently live at my parents’ house (of course at least at the time of this post). I have nothing to my name which I see it as an Advantage. It’s to the equivalent of I have nothing to lose. No mortgages or car payments to chain me down. I don’t have kids or a job to sap my time off. I’m loaded with time and the power of youth in being young (to the envy of many) & my freedom is really only limited to my non-existent income and what money I have left. Up and down, a few months into publish (never really went around to doing a progress thread), a fair share of published books, and raking up sales of course…


So, does losing money really account to failure? Of course not. Many of you are scared of taking the first step, probably with some reasons. Can I relate? No. Because my situation is probably different from yours. What I can say is that I made the decision to drop out of college, to toss my degree which I was on track to obtain, to get more involved in this path. You will need to work out your own sacrifices and what kind of path you want to aim at. Also I was publishing during school so it wasn’t like some sort of spontaneous decision. I saw a possible opportunity & fascinated by what can be achieved.


So about losing money. Here is an example: student loses $100,000 for college within a 4 year period. Granted you can argue that he’s paying for it, not losing but that’s beside the point I’m trying to make. And the other thing one might say is that the student is getting some kind of return at the end (knowledge, a skill set, a job, etc). We should know that some things are not guaranteed.


The lesson is that millions of people are paying thousands of money to gain something that’s irrelevant at the present moment (my ‘degree’ is utterly useless unless I actually finish those years). Essentially it’s like they’re losing money. Of course I’m not saying school is totally useless, everyone currently in school should just up and drop out. It’s just one of my new viewpoints of the matter- plus the world would probably fall apart if this happened. Anyways it’s sort of an abstract way of thinking and plays into what I’m getting at next.


I decided to extend this thinking to my path on publishing. At the very start, I have lost a few thousand just from publishing my first few books (books as in not spending on just one). If this scares you, or the thought of losing any amount, then you damn better hope/make your first publish book a success or else you might give up right from the start. That or Change your Mindset. I’m guaranteed to learn a few things from this. I better (which I did)! Or else I’m on the path of total ruins with no chance of getting back up. Lose, Learn, Adapt, Improve.


Wake up late, late to work. Wake up late, late to work. Wake up late, sit on couch because you just lost your job.


That was my attempt at some analogy – how I do? I figure most people can relate to a job and some attendance/time accountability.


Why was it more than one book? Surely after one fail, I should just up and stop right, or better yet just give up right then and there? When I experienced that first failure, I thought I should pump out some more just to test how it would turn out. After a while, my thoughts changed to: yup, I definitely suck and should immediately stop doing what I was doing (but I wasn’t going to give up).


The underlining cause: Just because people are getting success from publishing does not mean I should hop in and publish a book and expect money to begin flowing in. Sure it happens; chances were against me at the time out of the millions who published a book. Of course I’m not saying to not publish. I just needed to step back to see what I was doing wrong and learn from my mistakes. What I instantly noticed was what I was doing for a market that I really had no idea about. Warning Signs.


I was Driven by the Success of Others & NOT my own. Now it’s not a bad thing to look at successful people and try to replicate what they are doing. It does work. The problem was My Execution. I started outsourcing right from the start. A Big No (IMO). First of all, I didn’t understand the market in the niche I was in. My only thought was – they are making money so I should too right? Failure on my part. I was in the mindset that ANY story could sell. It’s somewhat true to an extent, but I was not delivering to my audience.


My first change was to stop outsourcing (Stop what I was doing – reason was because in my mind it wasn’t working). You should always have a reason for doing something.


My next approach was to either continuing on with my current niche or change – (mind you that I was dealing with a targeted market niche in a genre, not aiming some book into a broad genre & expecting it to sell) - OR try something else. I opt for trying a different market.


Neither is a wrong answer. It comes down to what you do to adapt to shortcomings. Honestly I think I didn’t pursue the same thing because part of it was that the failure turned me off. I wasn’t feeling the same confidence or excitement I once had. It affected my drive & motivation. These things can get to you such as how people talking about negative/unsupportive influences (can come from all sorts of places & people). You just have to shake it off. Anyhow, change is also good and can bring a whole new perspective. A game changer is what I like to think of it as.


So here I was: totally new niche, new audience, new everything and most importantly - new plan of attack. This time, I was set to Writing my Own Story, everything from start to finish. Makes sense. The goal was essentially to Cut Cost. I found myself motivated again to get a book (a successful book) out there and possibly make up for the prior lost.


Flash forward so it doesn’t look like I magically wrote a book in 10 seconds: With the book published, I had sales but nowhere near recuperating what I had lost. I believed I set my expectations way too high. Sort of a similar trend, a problem I keep finding within myself. Not really a big fault though. Most people who go into new things generally have high expectations.


In my case, I think the prior lost contributed to me taking it a little too far. I was hoping for some magically reader group to show up and run my book to millions (probably thinking thousands at the time). Yeah, wasn’t happening at the time. Sure it’s mood dampening when you have such high spirits, but I had to be more reasonable than that. Well I had a few sales even if they weren’t what I had Hoped for. There comes a time when too high of expectations and you’re only fooling yourself. Regardless of that, this counted as a ‘successful’ book. Why wouldn’t it be? It was a good thing that I didn’t see it as a fail or else that could have changed everything moving forward.


The next step seemed obvious or at least it did to me. Write more books - pretty much what was preached and what writers do. I outsourced a few books in the beginning though it wasn’t successful, so it makes no sense that I should stop at one book in this new niche. And so I went at it, feeling great as I upped my book count. After about a month, I was hit with some bad news. My sales numbers, let’s just say it wasn’t impressive. In fact, I would say it was pathetic.


I didn’t even hit a hundred dollars. Looking back, yes that was nothing. Some people might have just given up. I know I was about to chalk it up as a shortcoming, but there was a reason why I didn’t. I was netting a profit in the new niche instead of further going in the negative. This was a Huge success (in my eyes – everyone is different) compared to what I started with. It’s all relative to what you had prior and what you gain now. Even if it’s way off my expectations, why would I beat myself over earning a few dollars when earlier I was losing? I wouldn’t. Would you?


Here’s the thing: You tell someone who makes say a couple thousand a month that you made a hundred, it’s not exciting. It doesn’t pump them up. They might see it as pathetic and think it’s laughable. On the other hand, you tell someone who’s not making any sales and/or losing money, they see hope in the fact that you made some money. They want to be like you and therefore you gave them some motivation to do better.


Present time: Not going to lie, from where I am now, I would think the amount of sales I had made was discouraging. But it was Necessary. If I never went from losing money to making a few small sales, chances were I wouldn’t have made it far. Who’s to say I wouldn’t have given up if I made more loses?


Next obstacle to tackle at was the problem with sales. So how do I go from a few sales at the time to more? This is a question you might one day find yourself asking if not already. It comes down to: how do I make more money? There are a few ways. Do I write more books and scale it up? Do I look at the existing books themselves and improve on present/future ones (title, descript, cover, sample, whatever it is)? What about the audience, am I targeting the right people?


What I did was I tested a different niche within my broad general genre.


How to explain this for those who need clarification: Say I was into Transportation Vehicles. I’m selling X model sedans (niche) under cars (broad genre). Well since I’m successful, I tried out Y model sedans (niche) still under cars (broad genre). Similarities but totally different. You get it? Basically you’re opening yourself up into different potential markets.


High explosive growth is what I just described. I’m sure some people are already doing either under different pen names or all under one umbrella. It can be small or big changes such as fiction to nonfiction/ vice-versa.


All talk, now for the real life example: Before (if I haven’t completely lost you yet) I said I ‘tested’ instead of going into my new niche. This is because I had no idea if this would even work out (aka if the new niche was profitable). I wrote up a book and published into the new niche. I saw sales coming in daily. After a few days when they keep coming, I felt like I hit something big. The big difference was it was doing better than what I had going on.


How good?: The one book easily netted over a hundred within a month. The results were mind-blowing (at least to me) since I didn’t even make one hundred the month prior, and now I had a book that triumphed and surpass all the prior books (collectively). Of course, I didn’t know this at the time though. I just thought I could capitalize on this once I saw the daily sales as an Indicator. The sales were telling me to write more books geared towards the new found niche.


My sales have increased ever since. It obviously should - given that I wrote more books, but the larger part of it was due to the second niche. This was the outcome of my choice to test the waters of a new niche.


Some people are caught up on their existing book and marketing that they fail to see different avenues of wealth. Some people believe that they need to write more books when they don’t have sales or in order to scale into more sales (for lack of), they need to write more. I’m not undermining the idea that ‘more books = better’; I’m presenting a thought that perhaps you need to dabble in other niches that might be more profitable. Test the waters and perhaps you may stumble upon something that could potentially double/triple/X your return on investment.


For those looking for options or worrying about getting out of your comfort level, give it a try. Had I not make a significant discovery? I could have just gone back to my prior niche. Nothing big lost that I could see. If I didn’t give it a try, I might not have stumble upon a goldmine.


Could things have gone differently? Absolutely. I’m better off than before, but I could have missed a bigger better option out there because of the second niche. I’m sure that I’m probably missing out on some other opportunity elsewhere even to this day. But in the end, it really comes down to what you do. There’s always a trade-off and you need to get out there and make the best of it. At the time, it was only time & minimal cost with potential huge results. Seems like an easy choice. All in all, perhaps I just hit a lucky break when I made a change. Simple change, huge difference.


I believe that I came a long way and even now, there’s still room to improve. I come to realize that you’re truly starting once you start losing money because that means you’re taking some sort of action. Don’t take this the wrong way though. There’s a difference between spending money for the sake of spending and losing money while working towards a goal. When you go from a negative to hitting that first earning (no matter how small) it is a great feeling and can give you a high level of success.


When you hit something big, you want to scale it up. When you start making a few thousand a month is typically when you have a workable thing or two down. At that point, you’re usually trying to scale it up further or branch out because you’re already making a decent return. I’m here with the flexibility to take more risk or experiment with more things. Heck, I have the Option to write a book and publish it without a care of whether it sells or not. That is where I think you would want to be at because it sort of signifies some sort of financial freedom as well as the freedom to write whatever it is that you want. Some people might view it as a waste of time, counterproductive, or whatever but once you’re there, it’s great to know that you made it.


While said, there are a huge number of writers/publishers that are above where I am (in terms of sales/$$) as there are a huge number of people below me. I'm not ignorant enough to deny that and I’m alright with that

End note - Well I am a writer so I kind of thought the post might be long. Certainly feels like it compared to reading as most writers would know . I broke it down since no one likes wall of text & that I'm a nice guy - you want your readers to be happy.

 

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tldr: College dropout whose attempting the self-publishing/writing route to earn a living. He's had some initial failures, but has persisted and found a profitable niche.

I come to realize that you’re truly starting once you start losing money because that means you’re taking some sort of action. Don’t take this the wrong way though. There’s a difference between spending money for the sake of spending and losing money while working towards a goal. When you go from a negative to hitting that first earning (no matter how small) it is a great feeling and can give you a high level of success.

Welcome to the forum!