I was talking to another mom I'd just met at the local park the other day.

She asked me where I lived, and I pointed to one of the high rise buildings across the street from the park.

"Wow!" she exclaimed. "That's a nice building. What do you do for a living?"

I told her that I was a writer.

"Me too!" she continued. Actually - she explained - she'd just started pursuing a freelance writing career. She wanted to write fiction for a living, but writing copy seemed to hold more cash generating possibilities.

I agreed. I've been writing copy for several years, and if you're good, it can definitely yield big bucks.

Though she confessed, "My friends are trying to steer me away from a writing career. They say it's too difficult to make money consistently. But judging from where you live, I bet you can tell a different story."

Freelance writing is a business that you can readily take in many different directions. The problem with most struggling freelance writers is that they put on blinders and ignore the multitude of opportunities surrounding them.

I'm not like that.

I have certain topics that I like to write about. But what I do is figure out how I can sell and re-sell those ideas in different ways. So instead of simply writing freelance articles - which can put you in a financial straightjacket if your clients aren't buying articles - I sell my thoughts in several different ways.

My primary form of income comes from self-publishing my own e-books and print manuals.

A lot of freelance writers snub their noses at the prospect of self-publishing and selling their own e-books. They perceive the e-book industry as some kind of "get-rich-quick" scene that they must vehemently stay away from.

It's true, there are a lot of get rich quick e-books out there... but who cares? For one thing, that's NOT the extent of the e-book publishing industry. And secondly, there really are people who make $20K+ a month marketing online. If they choose to sell their experiences in the form of a $100 e-book, what's so awful about that?

The last time I checked, the purpose of running a freelance writing business was to make money. I don't get why some freelance writers feel it's nobler to give away all of their advice, rather than selling at least some of it.

Then again, I'm not "starving artist" - I'm a full-time, self-employed writer. My hobbies are my hobbies... but I treat my business like a business.

And if you're one of those people, who cringes at the mere thought of an e-book, you're ultimately holding the gun to your own head and robbing yourself of a legitimate way to increase your writing income. Period.

Let me tell you why:

1. Yes... a lot of information is free online - but it's also very difficult for the average person to find it if they don't know what keywords or websites to use. And that population is a lot more vast than you probably think it is.
2. Certain people perceive free information as being unreliable in one way or another. Think of someone who needs mission critical information for a multi-million dollar proposal at work. They're probably NOT gonna log on to HubPages to get the information they need, even though there may be very well written articles here.
3. There are certain bodies of information that just aren't available for free anywhere online. And if someone needs that information right away, an e-book is a logical, often necessary, option for them.
4. Some people just like to get their hands on every, single bit of information available on a topic - whether it's free or not. For example, I like to do photography in my free time. I have a growing library of portrait photography books. And it doesn't matter that I can find portrait photography information for free online. I don't always want to read it online, nor do I care that it's free online. I want it the way I want it, even if I have to pay for it.

I went into a Stride Rite looking for school shoes for my daughter. My daughter has extremely narrow feet, and none of the 6 pairs of shoes the sales person offered fit her.

The sales person put an insole in to the one pair that seemed the most likely to fit. They still kept slipping off.

I suggested that she go down a size, because I knew that I could rarely get a shoe that gave my daughter extra wiggle room. She needed a shoe that fit her exactly.

The sales person told me that she really couldn't go down a size, and that it was NORMAL for some shoes to slip a bit. She wouldn't even bring out the next size down.

Needless to say, I left the store without those shoes. The sales person felt like she was saving me some money by not giving me the exact size I wanted.

In reality, all she did was miss out on a sale. I can easily afford to buy my daughter new shoes every week. I don't need to be "saved" from spending my own money - thank you very much.

Because of her narrow feet, I normally have to buy my daughter $100+ Naturino's several times a year. So those $65 Stride Rite shoes were a bargain in my book.

If she would've just brought me those shoes, I'm sure I would've been walking out with a Stride Rite bag in my hands.

And what the sales woman did is the SAME THING that most most freelance writers are doing when they snub their noses at the e-book buyers market.

We live in an online society where people come from all types of backgrounds. If you don't cater to the people with the cash, somebody else will. That's a fact.

But if you can manage to eek out a 20-page e-book a month, at least you'll have some financial padding against those times when people aren't buying your articles or clicking on your Adsense links. That's the way you avoid becoming one of the millions of "starving artists" in this business. You diversify.

And who knows... you might just find that one day your e-books outperform your article income by a long shot. I know that I did.

(And I'm not ashamed to SELL you my story!) :-)