[Ep 203]
If you’re like me, you do a lot of writing and writing-related activities essentially for free. You craft social media content, articles for a blog, and guest posts as part of your plan.
We do these kinds of activities to educate, entertain, and inform. We hope to solve problems for readers, connect with them, share our ideas, and build bridges.
At the same time, we may be trying to gain visibility as a writer or increase reach into new audiences to help even more people. We might create a freebie to add subscribers to our email list or write articles on spec to beef up our author bio with stronger social proof.
We write books that may take years to complete before we even begin to search for an agent or publisher—again, we’re essentially writing for free long before the first reader plops down a credit card.
It’s a lot of work.
Is it worth it?
How do you determine if it’s worth it?
What’s the Return on Investment
As host Anne Watson interviewed Crystal Paine for The Declare Conference Podcast, they discussed whether it’s worth it to create “lead magnets” for every blog post.
Crystal advised listeners to look at the time involved in making them and the results you’re getting. “I’m always looking at what is the return on my investment of time.”1
Anne asked, “How are you filtering what you think is the best place for you to spend your time?”
Crystal responded:
The ROI. One hundred percent the ROI. That is what I focus on. So how much time is this going to take me and how much money is this going to make me or how many new people is this going to bring in. And that might sound super selfish or something but that’s what I have to do, because I have a very limited amount of time that I can focus on every day….2
She continued:
Mostly I focus on how do I serve my own audience well, and what are the few things that we’re going to change this year that I feel are going to serve my audience best. And that’s really my heart with everything that I do…I just really focus on providing content for my audience, serving my audience, building relationships with my audience, and trying to become better as a person by reading good books and sharpening my writing, critiquing myself on video and on podcasts and just constantly learning and growing as a person and I think that trickles down into everything you do.3 {beginning around the 24:00 mark}
Is it worth it to publish a blog post twice a week and post on Instagram daily? Is it worth it to work for a year on a book that doesn’t have a publisher? Is it worth it for you to submit an article to a magazine where you may not be paid?
Only you can answer those questions, based on how you measure your ROI.
What are you getting for the resources you’re investing?
Crystal Paine’s ROI
As you saw, Crystal Paine is running her ROI through her personal values and goals for her business. She asks:
- How much time is this going to take me?
Then she revealed the returns that matter to her:
- How much money is this going to make?
- How many people is this going to bring in?
- How is this content serving my audience?
- How is this activity helping me build relationships with my audience?
- How is this activity helping me become a better person?
Regarding that last point, you may recall Crystal listed activities like reading good books, sharpening her writing and speaking skills, and learning and growing as a person. She said, “I think that trickles down into everything you do.”4
So investing time in reading a book has a good ROI if it helps her grow as a person or writer.
ROI Is Personal
ROI in business relates more to investments bringing monetary results or company growth. But you may calculate the ROI in a more personal way, as Crystal does when considering books she might read next or the few podcasts that she listens to.
Listening, reading, creating—it all takes time, so she’s determined for herself what makes it worth her investment of time.
You could ask about the investment required of you with any given activity:
- How much money will this require?
- How much time is this going to take from my family?
- How much travel is involved?
- How much technology do I have to learn?
- How much conference speaking is required?
And you get to decide on returns that matter to you:
- How much money will I make?
- How many people will I help?
- How many new readers will I connect with?
- How will this feed me creatively?
- How will this establish me as a subject matter expert?
- How will this make me a better writer?
- How will this make me a better person?
- Will this bring me energy or drain it away?
Your list may include many other returns that matter to you. It’s all part of how you decide if a particular activity or task is worth it for you to take on.
Real Scenarios
Your ROI not only helps you decide if an activity is worth it, it also helps you decide between two activities or tasks and determine the best order to tackle them.
If you feel it’s more important to finish a book project than to develop your writing skills further, you could invest in a personal writing retreat where you complete your draft instead of signing up for a writing workshop where you would gain new skills.
Or vice versa.
If you’re not sure you know how to plot a novel or organize a nonfiction book, you may want to gain more skills before launching the project. So you take a creative writing course before writing a book, and that would be worth the investment.
Your investment of money in the course promises a return of improving your writing skills. As a result, when you do begin to write the book, that time you invest in writing should result in a better book because of the skills you gained to pull it off.
Determine Your Personal ROI
You get to determine the returns—the results—that make an activity worth the investment of your time and resources.
And you can begin to determine your own ROI based on who you are and where you’re at in your writing journey.
When you wake up in the morning to tackle the work and someone asks, “Is it worth it?” You want to be able to say, “Yes. Yes, it is worth it.”
And then you’ll settle your seat in that chair and get to work.
Stay tuned for more on a Writer’s Guide to ROI. Next week is part two.
Resources
- Declare Podcast interview with Crystal Paine
- A Writer’s Guide to ROI series
- Write to Discover series
- All podcast episodes
You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast player or find it through Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.
Footnotes
- “Increasing Your Return on Investment :: Crystal Paine {EP 94}.” Declare. https://declareconference.com/increasing-your-return-on-investment-crystal-paine-ep-94/
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
Great article.
Well, I’m glad you took time to read and respond.
It’s amazing that no one has written the same content before. My biggest gripe about most of the tips is the overuse of the word “writer”. I believe that a writer should have a guide in writing Write a blog post on writing and start writing on your blog” does the same thing as “write a blog post for your blog”. Sure there are some good things that can be learned and done right but I find this kind of “tip” as a way of writing is incredibly lame when you realize that “read a blog” is a bad thing because it does not provide any substantive information about the content it is trying to write.
Thanks for your suggestion. I’m always looking for ways to improve!
Thank u v much for making it worth it. pls. what is ROI stand gor?
It’s my pleasure! ROI stands for “return on investment.” In marketing, you’d figure your ROI by looking at how much you spent on an ad campaign compared with how much business it brought in (and how many sales you made). Hopefully you spend a small amount for ads that brought in a large amount of revenue! Here, I’m helping writers think about how they are investing time, energy, and money to ensure they are getting some kind of return, like more subscribers on their email lists or more training to be better writers…something that moves them closer to their goals. Hope that helps!