Article Writing vs Article Marketing

Hey everyone,

First some background, and then my questions:

I have a full time 9-5 day job.
I have a family (wife, kids).
I started article marketing back in 2007.
From 2007 through 2009, I managed to create several campaigns and write hundreds of articles. I make a modest amount of passive income every month from those campaigns, even to this date. But only enough to pay a few bills, not enough to replace my day job income.

But then in 2009, I got downsized through my day job. I know that building up income through article marketing takes time and patience, and is not for those who "need money now".

So I began providing article writing services... I stopped working on more article marketing campaigns and began focusing on article writing services exclusively.... It was a matter of "survival", as the article writing business has helped to keep us afloat.

Now things are getting better economically in terms of my day job, so some of the pressure is off... but I still need the supplemental income.

Now here's my dilemma:

I am beginning to hit a wall... With less than 20 hours of free time to spare per week, I am beginning to realize that there is only so many articles I can write, and so much fishing for new article writing clients I can do per week.... I am also beginning to realize that when I get orders to write 50 articles per week for one customer (for example), that's time being taken away from 50 articles I could have written for my own article marketing campaigns.

* I want to be able to transition from article writing for others, back to article marketing for myself again.*

But here is the fear / doubt / question in my mind:

I know that if I write 50 articles in one week for a customer, I might make a fixed amount of money as a one-time payment. That's guaranteed income.

I also know that if I write 50 articles in one week for my own campaigns, I will make a certain amount of money over time, potentially forever. But that amount, and that time horizon is unknown.


I guess what I would like feedback on is:

If I could draw two superimposed graphs....
articles written vs money over time for other people

and

articles written vs money over time for my own campaigns

....

How much time would it take for me to get to the point where I could confidently say "I make more money creating my own article marketing campaigns than I would if I spent the same amount of time writing articles for others".

Assume that I *need* the money, and have maybe at most a tolerance of 30 days give or take, before I would *need* that equivalent amount of money.

(eg- If I knew that I had to write 50 articles per week for the next 4 weeks, and I would start seeing a few hundred dollars per month of guaranteed passive income, I would at least be willing to take the risk to stop writing articles for others and start focusing on my own article marketing campaigns. As of right now, I have doubts about whether or not I should shut down my article writing business and focus on my own article marketing campaigns or not. Obviously my long term goal is to make enough money passively from article marketing to quit my day job.)

Does my rambling make sense?

Any thoughts / feedback would be appreciated.