Over the past nine years that I worked as a freelance writer, I have come across many writers who have experienced writer burnout. To me, writer burnout is when writers lose their passion for writing. Instead, they begin to dread the writing process, procrastinate about writing-related tasks, and feel an overwhelming sense of career stagnation and frustration.

When writer burnout happened to me, it was a scary feeling indeed. I have always loved to write and can literally write for hours when I am writing about a subject that I’m passionate about. However, when I experienced writer burnout, I even considered leaving my writing career behind.

For a brief moment, I considered pursuing a career as a Natural Labor Coach or Doula. Now mind you that I have had three kids naturally, believe in natural childbirth, and believe that women can have miraculous natural births (if they so choose.  But coaching other women through the natural birth process is not my passion. It is not something that motivates and excites me. It was something that I was trying to do to avoid writer burnout.

Anyway, I believe that you can avoid writer burnout if you follow these tips:

1.    Put your IM goals first. If you’re serious about Internet Marketing, then every single day, whether you feel like it or not, you have to do something to further your IM business before you do anything else. This includes writing articles, blog entries, conducting niche research, whatever will help you achieve your IM goals. You must do this before you handle your client’s projects and before you surf on the ’net, or do other tasks.

2.    Have realistic expectations. Remember there are only 24 hours in a day, not counting the eight hours need for sleep, personal and family time, etc. Never take on more work than you can realistically handle. If you ignore this rule, you’ll be increasingly stressed out and frustrated because you won’t be able to get everything done and you’ll feel a sense of failure for not meeting high expectations.

3.    Don’t be so hard on yourself. As a ghostwriter turned Internet Marketer, you’ll experience highs and lows. Clients may or may not like your work, you may experience the dreaded Google slap, your eBook may be a success or a complete flop. However, you must not dwell on the negative. Instead, figure out what works and what doesn’t and then do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

4.    Enjoy the journey towards success. Keep your eye on the prize but enjoy the journey. Although financial security is a worthwhile goal, you enjoy your life. For instance, if you like going to plays then take a portion of your earnings and treat yourself to theater tickets once in awhile. This will motivate and entice you to keep going.

5.    Don’t ever give up on your dreams. With Internet Marketing, you’ll try a bunch of things.  Some will work and some won’t. The key to ultimate success is to never ever give up. You have to keep at it. Just like Edison didn’t give up with the first failed attempt at the light bulb, you have to keep improving and using failure as feedback.

There are numerous ways that you can utilize Internet Marketing to make money online when you have outstanding writing skills. Some of the most popular ways include ghostwriting or editing, developing content-rich websites, selling affiliate products with bum marketing, flipping content sites, etc.

Although I think these are all great ways to meet one’s financial goals, my belief is that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. That is, you need to diversify your talents and use different business models to leverage your skills.

By doing this, you are protected against the unexpected. In addition, if one income well dries up, you’ll have others to rely on.

Consider the story of Mary. Mary built 40 niche websites specifically for AdSense. That is the only method that she used. By using clever IM strategies, she was able to create a nice steady flow of $1000 a month simply from AdSense-related clicks. The only way she monetized her site was with AdSense.

Well, one day Mary heard of a strategy called “AdSense Arbitrage” from one of the supposed internet gurus and decided to give it a shot. By using the Arbitage method, Mary purchased Google AdWords for .05 per click. This increased the traffic to her website and ultimately her AdSense earnings increased, also.

Within a short while, her income from AdSense also increased. In fact, the month that she used Arbitage, her monthly income was $1,650.00 a month – she paid AdWords $150.00.

Well, Mary was pretty proud of herself and life seemed great for a while. Then on Christmas Eve, Mary got a present from Google. It was the dreaded Google slap letter saying that her account had been terminated.

Apparently Google didn’t like the AdSense Aribitage method that she was using and they closed her account just like that. No warnings whatsoever. No nothing.
So, within a day, Mary lost her $1500.00 revenue stream.

Although some people would have simply said “the heck with Internet marketing,” Mary held her head up high. She took all the AdSense ads down and simply found other ways to monetize her niche sites.

Mary wrote and started selling related eBooks, affiliate products, and short reports. She also used conceptualized advertisements and sold links on her sites. Now, Mary makes $2000 a month from her sites. Although it took some time, she used the power of diversification to her benefit.

The point of this is to never put your eggs in one basket. As a writer, you wouldn’t depend on one client for all your revenues, so you shouldn’t depend on one IM method, either.

Instead, by leveraging your IM methods and using your writing talents to your benefit, you’ll come out smelling like a wealthy rose!