Are you also enjoying writing and suddenly realize, how you can monetize this skill? Well, in today’s guide, we will learn everything about how to make money as a writer. If you are a beginner or a pro if you have not monetized this skill, you won’t go far.
There are many ways to make money as a writer like freelance writing, your blog, writing for a publisher, or a company as a full-time writer. We will discuss every one of them in detail and know how you can work in different fields.
Before jumping on the main topic you need to know some basic things about this industry:
Passion For Writing: If you are serious about making money by writing, You must be passionate about it because, in the initial stage, there is a high chance that you won’t get paid, if you are not passionate about it you will leave it halfway.
Creative: As a writer you should be creative enough to engage your readers, like they are reading a storybook, this is not something that you are born with, you gain this ability by experience.
Patience: This is a must-have thing if you are starting anything, as I told you earlier there is no guarantee that you will get paid on the first day when you start but if you are patient enough opportunities will come to you.
How to Make Money As A Writer
There are many ways to make money as a writer but in the beginning, you need to focus only on one or two methods and master those.
1. Micro Blog
For beginners, microblogs are the best option because there is no need to spend money when you are learning. Microblogging sites like Medium and Quora provide options for you to create your own space on the site in the form of a page, where you can write and publish your articles for free.
There you will learn about the competition and the tone in which people are writing blog posts on different topics, also there are a lot of different groups and pages you can join from different categories to understand about.
As your blog posts start getting attention now you are ready to move further, make sure you have a well-established profile on the platform you are working on, it makes it easier for people to connect easily.
Micro-blogging platforms like Medium and Quora also provide you the facility of monetizing your content, there are mainly two forms of making money directly from the platforms.
- Ad Revenue
- Subscription
When readers pay for reading your content, that is subscription-based, Medium is very popular for subscription-based content writing.
Quora and Facebook Pages provide you the facility of monetizing your microblog with ad revenue, the more people visit and read your blog more money you will make.
Pros and Cons of Micro Blogging
PROs
Although micro-blogging platforms are good and well there are some flaws in it too like:
- For microblogging you don’t have to worry about domain and hosting, platforms will provide you with a subdomain for absolutely free.
- Since these platforms have their audience in large numbers, there is a high chance of getting your content to a large sun of people in less time.
- Easy to set up, Just create an account and you are ready to publish.
- It allows you to build a huge audience on the platform and connect with them.
- You don’t have to worry about SEO, platform will do everything.
Cons
- Although it seems super cheap and easy the reality is different, since you don’t host the content on your own it’s not yours, they can just delete your page and kick you out from their platform.
- Since it is very easy to set up, platforms are crowded with content.
- Ad revenue generated from microblogs is very little, you need high engagement to generate a decent amount from microblogs. Writers often complain about low ad revenue but the platforms don’t care.
Best Micro Blogging Platforms
Here is the list of the best microblogging platforms where you can just sign up for free and start publishing your blog posts.
2. Start a Blog Website
When starting a blog website, Every writer should have their website doesn’t matter what type of content they are writing, today you can monetize any content.
You need two things a domain name and hosting to start a blog, which you can purchase from any website like Godaddy, and hosting from hostiner, Bluehost, and HostGator.
Install WordPress and set it up with premade theme templates, setting up a blog website is as easy as cutting a cake, and hosting providers will provide you with a step-by-step process for setting up wordpress. You can watch a YouTube video if you are facing any other problem.
After you finish setting up your wordpress blog, it’s about time you submit your site to Google Search Console, it will allow Google to crawl your website pages automatically and index them to the Google search engine.
How to Make Money Writing Blog Website?
There are many ways to make money from blogs let’s discuss them one by one
1. Ad Revenue
Ad revenue is the primary way to make money from blog websites. TO monetize your blog from ad revenue you need to fulfill certain criteria, it depends on the ad service provider like Google Adsense, Adsterra, Mediavine, and many more.
The more traffic you can drive to your website the more revenue you can hope to generate from ads. also, there are many other criteria on which ad revenue depends like country, region, niche, and competition.
Read: How Much Can You Make From Blogging
Some popular platforms to monetize your website
- Google Adsense
- Mediavine
- Adsterra
- ezoic
- Media.net
- AdclickMedia
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is another option for writers to monetize their work, for those who are still living in caves, affiliate marketing is a process where you promote a product and when you get a sale, you are credited some commission.
Earning from affiliate marketing doesn’t depend on how pageviews are, it depends on how many people are converting to buyers after reading your blog.
For this writers have to be creative and crafty so that they can convenience the buyers to convert. But one of the advantages of an affiliate blog is that even a single conversion can make you a hundred dollars. Well-established blogs are making more money than ad revenue.
Also Read: What is Affiliate Marketing | Best Affiliate Programs
Surely there are some disadvantages too like, the market is already saturated and you will face tough competition in the initial stage but once you are settled you can make good money from affiliate marketing.
Also, you don’t need any money to join and start an affiliate program.
3. Sell Digital Products
Another method is to sell digital products on your website like an ebook, email templates, and many digital downloadable products and since digital products are cheap they are highly profitable.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Starting a Blog Website
Advantages
- You have full control over your content, you can publish it, delete it, or make it private, and you have complete control over your website data.
- You can scale your blog website into a business according to your requirements.
Disadvantages
- You need to learn SEO both off-page and on-page because without that you cannot hope to rank and derive traffic to your site.
- There would be many ups and downs like not ranking, low traffic, and building domain authority.
- Protecting your website from getting hacked is also a big issue. It’s a high-risk reward game.
3. Freelance Writing
Another way to make money by writing is freelance writing, in freelance writing, you build your portfolio and start seeking clients online.
Freelance writing is considered to be the best form of writing because, you don’t have to worry about anything like ownership, management, research, or any other thing. Just write the content and send it to your client.
But also in freelance writing, you make comparatively less money than any other form of writing. To put it in simple words less responsibility less money. This is best for people who want freedom along with their work.
There are some advantages and disadvantages too like:
Advantages and Disadvantages of Freelance Writing
Advantages
- You have your full freedom of work. Just need an internet connection and you can start working from anywhere in the world.
- There is no workload, you can pick up the gig if you want to work otherwise there is no need to, this is called work freedom.
- Writing online builds your online portfolio, so if you decide to apply for a writing job, there is a high probability for you to get one.
Disadvantages
- Due to high competition, it’s very difficult for new freelancers to join and get a client.
- Pay rates are too low for beginners even for for high rankers, there is not much increment.
- There is no guarantee that you will get the job in the first place.
4. Writing For an Agency or Business
Full-time writing is just like a regular job where you work for a publication or an agency to write about different topics, it can be news, reviews, or any product description. Here you don’t have to worry about competition and ranking anything, you would be given a keyword and you will craft content on that.
Advantages of Being a Writer for an Agency
There are some advantages of being a full-time writer:
- You don’t have to worry about the competition and SEO, your Job is to only write articles about the agency, and the marketing team will take care of the SEO, also there are proofreaders and other writers to correct your mistakes.
- You don’t have to worry about the hosting and other things like that, the agency will do everything.
- You will be paid on time.
Disadvantages of Writing For an Agency
Some disadvantages of being a writer for an agency:
- You have time limited to complete your tasks.
- Your paycheque is already decided, unlike Google Adsense which pays you on ad revenue so no matter how much extra your work it won’t go up.
- You won’t have the freedom that every freelancer or blogger hopes to achieve.
5. Book Writing
Book writing is another best form of making money as a writer, here you are free to do anything according to your plan. You can write an ebook or a physical copy of your book and start publishing on e-commerce platforms like Amazon Kindle and more.
Book writing takes time so don’t think about instant money when you start writing a book, there are many unknown variables
Advantages and Disadvantages of Book Writing
Advantages
- Once your books start getting public attention, you can make a lot of money.
- You can use the ebook format to sell your books digitally.
- You have full control over
Disadvantages
- Book writing is easy but you need a marketing team to sell your books, certainly, you are not thinking that you will write a book and people will suddenly start buying it.
- This is a long-term process it can take you 4-6 months to write a book and there is no guarantee that it will be successful in the market.
Conclusion
Making money by writing is a passionate job that every writer dreams of having, there are many methods to do so I have discussed the majority of them, you can choose from them and start working.
If you are thinking that you can only make big money through your blog, you might be right but only up to some extent because many writers are writing for others and charging thousands of dollars for a single post.