Can you truly win writing contests and bank a sizable sum every month, simply from your competition awards? Yes, you can. And you can enjoyably achieve a substantial income every year – without needing to publish your stories elsewhere.

However, to earn a regular paycheck from writing contests you need to become impartial enough to regard your stories in a ruthless way as commercial ‘products’ – and to tailor each one exactly to a given contest.

That’s a tough call! Many authors begin by writing for themselves and only later trying to sell their work. That’s fine, if you write just for fun. But when you want to win competitions – or publish your work for cash – it’s a bad idea.

To succeed, you must adapt your work to your customer. In contests, it’s a contest judge.

Adapting a story for a commercial purpose is a difficult lesson for any new writer to learn. But it’s worth it.

There’s good profit (and fun!) in winning story competitions.

» Read more: Writing Contests – How To Make A Five-Figure Income From Your Stories