Speculative Work and Self Employment

You are in effect working for yourself, without pay or profit in the short term, in hopes of selling your product for pay [and ideally profit] in the future. As such it can be strongly advised to consider your ventures in the same line as you would any other small business.

Focus on your product, what you are selling, and who you are selling it to. Review your processes to develop your product, and carefully consider what your product actually is long term, and who your customers are. But be wary of how you draw boundaries here.

Consider the fact that in the long term your best product might not really be your writing, and your customers may not really be your readers. You yourself might be your best product, and your real customers may be those in the publishing industry.

Refocusing towards marketing yourself, and improving your personal marketability, may be highly important goals over the long term. As would continued expanded networking to help better establish connections that may lead you to more potential customers.

Setting your goals, milestones, and deadlines accordingly, and carefully considering problems that may be limiting your 'sales' will go a very long way toward eventually reaching sustainable sales.

With all that said...

Two of the biggest hurdles to get over when doing Spec work is to be able to stay focused and build strong progress towards goals, and at the same time being able to establish accurate and sensible goals.

Keep asking yourself "What can I do to add value", and "How can I best achieve value".

Is your writing polished and presentable?
What style of writing do you 'click with', and is your current writing method producing results?
What are the flaws and issues holding you back?

If you are hitting roadblocks in sales, then it may be time to step back and look at what the problem actually is.

Are you marketing effectively?
Is your product sensible and polished?
Are you selling the right thing to the right customer?

Many of these questions aren't ones that are easily answered by yourself in isolation. Having feedback from others who can offer fair and honest views will help cut through doubt and confusion. But be wary of who you're getting feedback from... Writing feedback is honestly one of the hardest things to do due to how subjective everything is, and being at risk of getting false data back from friends or family trying to be 'too supportive'.

Always keep in mind that there is far more to being a profitable artist than just the art itself.

[Some of the most profitable artists got to where they are not because they produced great art, but because they were damned good at selling the art they did produce...]

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