Goose and the Golden Egg

Goose and the Golden Egg

We have all seen them. The magical emails draw in the hopeful writer, desperate to make something, anything, from their work. The lure and promise of $50-$100 per piece accepted for publication. The hopeful possibilities of making a couple of grand a month from their writing. Anything from data entry to essay submissions is needed by many entities, and you are in a prime position to earn that income, after all, the writer just did. In fact, the writer makes a couple of thousand a month, maybe more, even while they sleep. What they don’t tell you is how long it took them to reach that income. They don’t cite their own stories or poetry in those publications either, so you can’t verify those claims.

These days, it’s all about clickbait, likes, and shares. The article lures you in, offers you all these enticing possibilities, and then tells you they’ve done it, so you can too. Let me say this. Yes, you can do it like them, but it’s not that simple a task.

When I began writing about a year ago, I received those stories a lot. I still do. They end up in your inbox because your writing platforms almost force you to follow people right out of the gate. If you sign up for any of them, are you prepared to follow someone you don’t know or a publication you have never even looked at? I was not.

So I clicked on a couple of topics I thought I would be interested in. Guess what? Making money as a writer is a natural choice. We all want to make money doing what we love. We all need to justify our endless toil in the field at some point. The next thing you know, you are getting emails every day from these choices, sometimes two or three from the same sources each day. Your once-tame writing-specific email address is now a constant barrage of suggestions-“I did this, so you can too”-stories.

As I stated, I began receiving these throughout the day, and I was so enticed that I delved into each suggested possibility. This was my experience and determination.

First, many, and maybe most, suggestions are indiscriminate. They can range from coding and data entry to advertising and media posting. There is such a wide range of topics, and many don’t correlate with one another. I found it extremely difficult to believe that any of the writers actually write for a majority of the ones they taught as cash cows. The few examples I have just given you are a tiny sampling of genres or types of jobs. It makes no sense. Let me tell you why.

Intuitively, if you are a creative writer, I doubt you want to do the butt-numbing task of data entry or coding. I have a hard time believing any writer wouldn’t pull their teeth out from spending hours writing code or creating a jingle. I may be wrong, but I can’t connect the two.

Some of us may be able to craft copy to sell or promote a product. Is that how your brain works? Mine does not. I love writing stories and poetry. I write in a way that flows freely from my mind and heart. I use words, often in abundance, and try to paint a picture with them, imbuing a vision or scene in someone’s mind as they read. While writing off a prompt is part of that, I would not like to do that for a 20-second spot ad or a flashing post online. I need time to develop the images I want to create. I want to share some background to help better understand the piece.

Honestly, there are days when I can’t flip from poetry to creative writing, or go back and forth. It uses a different part of my creativity and language, I think. writing in one genre is dissimilar to the other in terms of phrasing emotions and feelings, for me.

I really found it difficult to believe that these writers are actually using all of these avenues to make a living. I suspect they are probably making a lot more money from your engagement, hoping you will read the piece you were drawn into.

I received some articles on how to make money by creating templates with AI programs, how to make memes that sell while you sleep, and so on. It’s like the dieting craze where you’re promised you’ll lose fifty pounds while you dream about flowers. It just isn’t that simple.

I visited many of these sites and found that the requirements were often not even geared toward anything I could do, let alone want to do, for money. I’m a bit of an idealist, yes, and I don’t want to have to prostitute my writing for a company to make money with and give me a fraction of a percentage for the energy and creativity I will use on that endeavor. Think about it.

If you spend any length of time trying to create anything, these companies will select from the many thousands of entrants like you who give it a go, and then you can actually stifle your creativity. I look at it as them taking the best of you and leaving little left for the rest of your writing. That is, if you get to write at all after you spend however long doing work for these companies. I don’t want to give my best work to anyone but readers, publications, and publishers.

I did look at the suggestions and even sent work to some, but the deal is, there are so many in the running for the golden egg that it is just as likely you will get the egg by writing what you love rather than what you have to write for pay. A lot of the sites listed in the posts you get don’t hire or aren't taking new talent, either. I came across many that were closed to new submissions or queries altogether. Some weren’t even accepting queries. So, if the writer you are reading is actually doing what he or she is telling us, then they got in a while ago.

What none of these stories tell you is the hundreds of rejections they received before they hit the right button. They never mention how many years they have been writing, let alone how long it took them to reach a point of consistent income. Now that would be a good piece to read, the struggle to get there and what they had to do to get there.

I did the math. If any of the writers of these financial inspirational stories are actually spending time working all these sites to make money, as they say, there is no way they would have time for much else. I don’t know about your life, but my family is already griping about how much time I spend writing. I treat it like a job. I am at my keyboard eight or more hours a day.

The truth of the matter is simple. If you want to write what you want and get your golden egg, you will have to work your fingers to the bone to get it. If you love writing, what you do is not work at all but joy. And yes, not every day is joy. Sometimes the brain wants a vacation, and the fingers have to work, so she grudgingly concedes defeat to your will.

Writing is work, a lot of it. Family and friends all think we are living a life of decadence because we don’t have to leave the house or deal with employers. Worse still, some people don’t think writing is our work but see it as a nice hobby or a quaint distraction. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Only you know and understand what writing means to you. Only you can decide what is worth your time and how much time you devote to it. It’s hard. It’s a long road to walk. But I would not want to be doing anything else. I would not enjoy it. Maybe that is you as well.

If it is, keep working. Keep striving for the dream. Try the suggestions from the financially motivating emails, or don’t. It’s up to you. I’m just sharing what I encountered. I wish someone had given me a heads-up so I wouldn’t have wasted hour after hour on things I didn’t want to do. I hope this helps new or even not-so-new writers avoid wasting the hours I did. Remember, the goose with the golden egg is you. You have that precious thing someone wants to read and appreciate. You have something to say that may change a life. You have, and are, the golden egg someone will pay to covet.

Keep writing.

(Published by No Time on Medium, June 2026)

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