Write a Novel Online
This one is a little different and has a bigger risk than the other making money online ideas, but if you’ve ever thought you had a novel in you then this could be the time!
All you do is simply write your novel, page by page and upload it to a blog. The income comes from google adsense ads on the site and from the eventual possibility that the novel could be picked up by a publisher.
More than 1.7m copies sold!
Think that sounds crazy? It’s already happening in Japan! Novels that were written on cell phones during train journeys are hugely popular, mostly by other people reading cell phone stories on train journeys. So it makes sense that a novel written on a blog would be popular with people who read blogs. In 2007, a little old I know, 5 of the top novels in Japan were written this way!
The risks are obviously larger with this method as there is the possibility that you could spend a lot of time and earn very little. The trick is to finish what you start, even if no one reads it. Once it’s written and finished then you have actually written a novel, something you can pass on to your children and grandchildren. Then just keep the site live online (you might want to take the dates off the posts) you never know, eventually it might just get picked up. I’ve often had web projects that never did anything suddenly become really popular, and generate nice incomes, 5 years later thanks to google.
Plus if you are doing this as a location free lifestyle even if it takes you a year to do, that year would cost you a lot less than if you were back home. Plus I guess it sounds cool when people ask you what you are doing by the beach all day “I’m writing a novel.” It’s even better when you can give them your business card with the URL of the book! Just the thing to get them addicted to the story and tell all their friends about it!
So when’s the first part of your novel coming out?
Update: If it’s good enough for Charles Dickens
Since I wrote this post I’ve found out that this is exactly how Charles Dickens managed to write so many books. Well, he didn’t blog them of course, but many of his books were serialized in monthly magazines. He had a set deadline each month to write the next chapter. And just look how successful he has been.
So, when are you going to be the first published blog novelist?
This sounds great, I may just have to start writing my novel…
I love this idea! It almost encourages you to write the BEST you can! After all, if your audience has to wait a whole month for a chapter, it’d better be good, right?