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Poverty and being a freelance writer and/or author go hand-in-hand at times, and it's best to be mentally prepared when your income takes a dramatic dip.
By
Jill Safran
Imagine that four is your lucky number. Say you are job hunting, and you get an interview on April 4th at 4:00 pm. What are the chances?
With all those fours in the mix, you know you’ll get hired.
So, of course, you do.
Everything about the job is perfect: friendly co-workers, an easy-going boss, and free parking.
Life is pretty good for a while until COVID-19 lockdowns hit your town. A few months later, your company announces they are creating a layoff list. Anyone without a certain number of years will find themselves on that list and out of work.
The number of years they decided upon is five.
And how many years do you have with the company?
Well…four, naturally.
But wait! Isn’t four supposed to be your lucky number? What’s going on here? Not only do you find yourself out of a good job; after several months, you are unable to find a new one. More importantly, you think you can no longer count on the signs from the Universe that once helped guide your path, and you need them more now than ever because you find yourself getting ready to kiss poverty—and you can already tell his breath stinks!
So what can you do?
As a mindfulness practitioner and a person who has experienced a heavy dose of financial hardship, I recommend adopting a few key mindsets.
MINDSET #1 – Deliberately Create a Future for Yourself
That dream of taking a European vacation two years from now is on hold. The money is gone. It went to pay the rent. Heck, you can’t even think about life two years from now when you aren’t even sure where you’ll find the money to cover next month’s electric bill.
Finding yourself in an impoverished state can seemingly rob you of your ability to see yourself doing anything in the distant future. When you held a secure and well-paying job, you could easily conceive of things like a 15- year retirement plan or a 30-year mortgage. However, when a person struggles financially, the individual’s time frame for goals and dreams often shrinks down to months or weeks. Sadly, many who are homeless live a day-to-day existence.
This type of short-term thinking is dangerous, as it can keep you trapped in poverty and lead to depression. Therefore, it is up to you to deliberately create a future for yourself. While the type of goals and achievements in that future might be dramatically different from your previous ones, there are still many things you can realistically see yourself doing.
One thing to consider is learning origami. There are free how-to videos online. Could you see yourself learning this craft and giving away some homemade origami projects to family or friends six months from now?
The important thing here is not what you see yourself doing; what is vital is that you set a goal for yourself at least six months to a year out into the future. If you don’t care for the art of paper folding, envision yourself doing something else. Even seeing yourself having cleaned out and organized the garage is okay as long as you see that as an obtainable goal that you could achieve in the future.
Why?
Because seeing yourself as having an extended future and being open to the possibilities that could enter into it creates the space for opportunities to come into your life. Believing you have opportunities increases happiness.
MINDSET #2 – Consider Yourself to be Your Main Investment
Wealth creation consists of saving money and investing it. Poverty can cause an individual to become preoccupied with the first part of that equation and dismissing the second part. Desperation to find savings on everything from milk to raincoats to toilet paper overtakes the brain. Save. Save. Save becomes your mantra. There usually isn’t any extra money left for investigating things like money market accounts or fine art, so the thought of investing leaves one’s consciousness.
Yet, this is the type of consciousness needed for wealth creation.
The best way to maintain this type of thinking is to reframe your thoughts about spending your money. For example, say you decide you want to save money by buying some online food saver bags. Putting fruits and vegetables into these bags will waste less food and reduce spending on produce.
That’s great.
However, you can also view this purchase as a smart investment in your health as you are prolonging the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in your home to improve your nutritional needs.
Notice how that line of thinking is expansive, whereas the notion of penny-pinching to save a few cents on produce is reductive. Having a balance of both thoughts can help relieve some of the anxiety financially challenged people create by continually entertaining thoughts of needing to save every dime.
MINDSET #3 – Turn Your Situation into a Game When Possible.
If you haven’t seen the film Life is Beautiful, please watch it. The story centers around a Jewish Italian bookshop owner who employs various games to shield his son from the horrors of imprisonment during World War II.
Let’s face it. Poverty isn’t usually fun. Leaky ceilings, worn-out shoes, and insufficient heating aren’t pleasurable experiences. Too much focus on these difficulties lowers our vibration, ignites stress, and increases depression. Since leaving your environment usually isn’t possible, making a game out of your situation is often a practical method for maintaining your sanity and optimism.
Here’s one option if you live with others: Get a small box or jar. Every time anyone in the household encounters stress, they get to write down the experience on a small piece of paper and put it in the container. At the end of the month, you can all play “Guess my Stress,” a type of charades played by taking turns pulling the pieces of paper out of the jar and act out, without speaking, the action on the paper.
The more ridiculous and exaggerated the actions, the better. Should you play this game, you’ll discover you’ve found a way to transmute the energy of stress and negativity into something funny and absurd. In that way, you will feel as if you have power over your troubles instead of feeling as if your troubles have power over you.
#Mindset 4 – Continue to See Yourself as Lucky.
Give the number four a break. Wait a while before seeking a different lucky number or talisman. You might not be as unlucky as you think. Had you stayed there, you might have found that downsizing caused your co-workers to become competitive, transformed your boss into a micromanager, and turned the free parking into a memory.
Keep in mind this quote from the Dalai Lama: “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
Understand that his message isn’t saying you have to do cartwheels every time something terrible happens to you. The things that push us into financial hardship don’t usually fill us with joy. Death, disease, and betrayal rarely ignite feelings of good fortune. However, if we can find an element of luck within the situation, we can increase our chances of attracting more luck into our lives.
In fact, according to Richard Wiseman, author of Luck Factor, lucky people see the positive side of their bad luck. They believe that any ill-fortune in their lives will, in the long run, work out for the best.
A mindset like this boosts resiliency and increases happiness. Think about using it if poverty forces its way on you and gives you a smelly kiss. No, you don’t have to love the experience, but you can hold your nose and get through it. Maybe afterward, you’ll meet someone who went through the same thing, and they’ll offer you a free beer or even a job.
Who knows?
You might be that lucky.
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Are you thinking about monetizing your website beyond Google or alongside Google Adsense? If you are, affiliate programs, like Amazon, make sense, especially since you can choose every product that is presented on your website or social media page, which means you are better able to custom target products that your visitors and followers may like to purchase.
1. Understand Your Audience
Before you sign up with Amazon, take a look at the metrics for your website and the follower profiles on your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. Who are they? What do they do? What do they post? Amazon sells millions of products, and your specific audience isn’t interested in 99 percent of those products. For example, if your audience is full of insurance agents, they’re probably not interested in reading the latest erotic thriller or purchasing baby clothes. If your audience is like mine, full of authors and writers, you can rest assured the vast majority aren’t interested in DIY vehicle upgrades or sports equipment. And you’re probably thinking – butbutbut some of them might me. You’re right, some of them might be, but the vast majority won’t be interested.
2. Understand What You do
The second most important metric to understand is yourself. What do you do? What’s on your website? What do you post on your social medial pages? What’s your brand? The latter question is usually the hardest for most sole-proprietors, especially those in creative industries, because they think of themselves as a person and not a brand. You are also a brand, and you will need to choose products and services from your affiliate marketing sites that align with your brand. If your brand is books, then think about books. Books, pens, paper, computer paper and office supplies. If you’re an insurance agent, then think about home and commercial offices. If you’re a car mechanic, then it’s everything cars, including maintenance manuals, car parts and car enhancements and upgrades.
3. Is Your Website Geared for People Who Are 13 Years or Older?
Amazon doesn’t want their products listed on websites and social media pages that are geared for people who are 12 years old and younger. It’s a checkbox during the process to add your sites. If you have a website and social media pages that are geared for young children, you can’t use Amazon ads on those sites.
4. Sign-Up for Amazon Affiliates
Now that you understand your audience, yourself and your webpages and social media accounts, it’s time to sign up. It’s a fast process and self-explanatory. Once you get in, you will need to tell Amazon how you wish to get paid. It’s a link located under your email address at the top of the page. Just hover over your email address, and a dropdown menu will appear.
5. Your Associates Account
Next, hover over your email address again and go to Account Settings. Now click on Edit Your Website and Mobile App List. You will need to enter the website addresses of everywhere you plan to advertise, and I do mean everywhere, including all your websites, social media accounts and any mobile or online apps that you happen to have and where you plan to put your Amazon Affiliate ads. This is also where the question – Are any of these sites designed for specific use for children under 13 years of age?
Note: It will do you no good to put affiliate ads on your Instagram account. Instagram does not allow for the clicking of links in posts. Since the money you earn on Amazon Affilaites is directly related to people clicking on the link and buying a product, Instagram is useless.
6. Manage Your Tracking IDs
Amazon sets you up automatically with one tracking ID during the sign-up process. If you want to breakdown your metrics, you will need to create additional tracking IDs. If you want to be able to look at the metrics for your social media accounts and websites separately, you should create a tracking ID like Mywebsites. In this scenario, you’d use your main tracking ID for your social media and the Mywebsites tracking ID for the ads on your website. However, it’s important to note that you will need to make sure you are working under the correct tracking ID when you collect your ad code. If you accidentally put an ad on your social media with the tracking ID Mywebsites, Amazon will put the metrics under MyWebsites.
7. Install SiteStripe
In order to make your product curation easy, I recommend installing SiteStripe. It’s located under Tools. This is an Amazon Affiliate Add-on for your web browser, and it allows you to search Amazon from the main pages and create ad code. It’s much faster to use site stripe to find individual products than it is to use the Product Links menu under the menu Product Linking in the Amazon Affiliates dashboard.
8. Find Your Products
Next, find your preferred products. Make sure each product is aligned with your brand, your message and your audience. If you’re placing them on your website, you can use the full code for HTML or Images. You can also take advantage of Banner, native Shopping ads and mobile popovers (if you really want annoying mobile popovers for those who are using cell phones). I recommend playing around with this so that you understand how the products appear on your webpage and which ones look best with your layout. It’s important to note that you will need to let your visitors know that the ads on your website are from Amazon. This can be the word “sponsored” below or above every ad or a menu link that explains that you are an Amazon affiliate. I use both because when I started this I didn’t know. The sponsored wording takes care of every ad I remember. The menu link covers every ad I forgot about over the last two years or can no longer find cause it’s buried.
If you are going to run products in your social media feeds, you always want to choose HTML SHORT LINK. This is the amz.blahblahblah. It looks cleaner, and everyone understands that a short link containing amz is from Amazon. You must also be compliant with the FCC regarding advertising. This means that for every post you put up, you need to add @amazon and #sponsored or something that lets people know that this is a link that goes to Amazon, and you will receive a certain amount of money if someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase.
9. Understanding Payments and How and When You Get Paid
Like all things Amazon, it’s on a two-month delay. If you sell books on Amazon, you are already familiar with the method. You get paid this month for items you sold two months ago. When your account reaches $10 (assuming direct deposit), Amazon will send the money to your account. If you choose another method, the amount that triggers a payout may be different. For direct deposit, you’ll get paid somewhere around the 29th of the month for which your account balance was $10 or greater.
10. Setting Expectations for Amazon Affiliates
I did Amazon Affiliates off and on for more than 10 years before I made a dime. I only started making money off of it when I started running ads down my social media feeds, and it was a decision that I took very seriously. I weighed the pros and cons. I thought about my audience. I thought about the spam factor, and eventually, I came up with a plan that wasn’t too horrific and aligned with the content that I was already running and included products I know I like because I own them. Did some of my audience vacate the premises when I started monetizing my social media? Yes, they did, but I get more kudos for highlighting relevant products on Amazon than I do complaints. This is why I say knowing your audience is vitally important. If you put products on your website and social media feeds that are not relevant, you will get thrown into the category of spammer by your audience. If you’re wondering how much you’ll earn, set your expectations low. If you sell 1 product a month, consider yourself a success.
11. Amazon Will Delete Your Affiliate Account if You Do Not Sell Anything
Amazon will give you the exact timeframe when you sign up. I can’t remember if it’s 3 or 6 months, but if you do not make a sale, Amazon will delete your affiliate account, and you will have to create a new one. Now, there’s no waiting period to create another account, but I do recommend doing some hard thinking on why you did not sell a single thing and adjust your strategy before signing up again. It’s also important to note that it does not matter how long you’ve had your affiliate account. The minute you stop selling for X month, Amazon will delete it. I tripped over the Affiliate forums one time and saw that a lady who had been an Amazon Affiliate for 20ish years was deleted because she didn’t make a sell within X months.
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The world doesn’t feel stable right now—and if your writing productivity has taken a hit, you're not alone. Between global conflicts, economic strain, climate anxiety, and the constant noise of social media, it’s harder than ever to maintain focus and creativity. For writers, the emotional and mental bandwidth once available for storytelling can be consumed by worry, doomscrolling, and burnout.
But this is also a time when stories are more important than ever. Whether you're writing fiction, memoir, or nonfiction, your voice matters. And that means finding a sustainable, nourishing routine to support your creative work—even if your days feel unpredictable.
Let’s start by reclaiming your routine in manageable, meaningful ways:
1. Morning: Anchor Your Start
Even in chaotic times, how you begin the day sets the tone. You don't need to wake up at 5 a.m. and meditate for an hour—but you do need to reclaim your morning as yours. Here’s how:
- Wake up around the same time each day. Consistency helps regulate your sleep, mood, and creativity.
- Avoid reaching for your phone first thing. Starting the day with social media or news can derail your mindset. Instead, drink water, stretch, and ease into your morning.
- Establish a short ritual before writing. This could be journaling, reading a poem, or sitting with your coffee in silence.
- Write first, if you can. Morning is often the best time to access unfiltered creative thinking before decision fatigue sets in.
Read more: Creating a New Writing Routine in Uncertain Times
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Are you an entrepreneur who is looking for alternative ways to market your products? When many business owners think about marketing, they think about buying online ads, TV ads and possibly radio ads and billboards. All of these marketing ideas are considered traditional. You pay a company to serve or show your ad a certain number of times per day or whenever someone performs an Internet search that relates to your business and the products you sell. While traditional marketing works well, the savvy entrepreneur looks for alternative ways to create more interest in their products, and one of those ways is through affiliate marketing, which is sometimes referred to as a partner program. With a partner program, you may be better able to reach a larger target audience and increase your sales.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing program that allows you to offer a certain percentage of the sale of an item to any entrepreneur who may be willing to place your products on their website. This is an ideal way to target a broader audience because the online business that hosts your products as advertisements probably sells similar services and products as your company. For example, if you sell custom car parts for older vehicles, websites that host your ads probably offer new and used car parts, but not custom car parts.
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An entrepreneur or online business signs up to be an affiliate marketer on your website.
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The entrepreneur or website owner chooses various products to advertise on their website and are given a custom link that points to your website and/or specific products.
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Potential customers view both the hosting sites products and the affiliate ads.
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If a customer clicks on the affiliate ad, they are taken to your online business and the specific product page.
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If the customer purchases a product, you gain a sale, and your affiliate marketer earns a percentage of that sale.
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When you’re in business, whether you’re a large corporation or a small business, operating as a sole-proprietor, LLC or S-corp, it’s extremely important to provide exemplary customer service in order to maintain your current customer base and grow. However, many companies, especially Comcast go out of their way to make terrible customer service a priority.
The Number One Reason Customers Quit Businesses
According to American Express, 86 percent of customers quit a business due to a bad customer experience. This means that it’s not due to getting a bad quality product or service, it’s absolutely due to the way the company handles the customer experience. For a brick and mortar store, providing a good customer experience may be as easy as having employees readily available to help customers find items and offering a speedy checkout service. If the customer does get a hold of a bad product or accidentally purchases the wrong product, it may be as simple as offering a speedy return process. For online companies, it means have quick phone customer service and/or no-hassle online options, like email and a chat option, where customers can get a fast resolution to their problems, questions or concerns.
Read more: 6 Ways to Create a Terrible Customer Service Experience