You know, the best things in life aren’t free. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
A few years ago, many companies began looking into renting you software. This way, you don’t pay $75… you just pay $10 a month for years.
They make a lot more money that way.
The surprising benefit to this is that certain applications have been developed that give you great but limited features for free… but they hold out the better features for low cost subscriptions.
When you’re debating whether you want to invest in something – like Evernote – stop and ask yourself a few questions first.
- Do I need to pay for the upgrade? Recently I got a full month of Evernote at its ultimate.It was a wow moment that I could literally clip indiscriminately and still only reach 3% of my monthly total! That showed me that I want the next step up, and don’t need the premium …yet!
- How many other programs and services do I need to invest in? I could pay for extra submissions to search engines, get Buffer Awesome (or whatever they call that) and an Evernote step up subscription. With the costs associated with my blog though, it looks like a poor idea until I begin to make more money from my writing.
- What is the yearly cost of all these programs and services? $3.99 for Evernote. $10 for Buffer. $19.95 for Search Engine ranking submissions for my website.At $35 a month, I can get a lot of career oriented benefit. But that’s $425 a year! It doesn’t seem like a lot at first, until you add it up. Like Buffer. I thought “$10 is reasonable.” Until I did the math, and suddenly it’s $120, not $10. Can I commit to $425 a year for these benefits? I’d love the benefits! But really, that’s a lot of money.
- What can I afford? Writing is an expensive hobby. There’s so many seminars, books and etc you want to buy, that I could probably make millions just selling to people who want to write books and movies for the rest of my life!
Conclusion
If I were making a lot of money from writing right now, you better believe – that and a cup of coffee! I’d be subscribed to Buffer or possibly CoSchedule. I’d probably be paying for the top of the line Evernote subscription. I’d be paying – without question – for the extra search engine rankings. I’d cheerfully pay for that and more! But when you’re not yet on Hollywood’s go-to list, when you’re still working on your novels to get them published, you’ve got to put certain things into the “When I’m making money from this…” category!
What services have you paid to upgrade?
