Making Money as a Writer

Start Writing Online

If you are a writer writing in the real world, you have limited options to make money. You can either work in a publication as an article writer, work as a journalist, do technical writing, write textbooks for schools/colleges, or publish books. However, in virtual work you have unlimited options, for example, you can work as a social media content writer, article writer, blogger, books, and ebooks writer, teach writing, etc. When you want to publish books in real work, it is really difficult to get published because publishers do not want to take chances with new writers. However, in a virtual world, you can self-publish books and ebooks and you do not have to spend any money to publish books and ebooks. Even as an article writer, it is easier to get started online compared to offline. For instance, when there are a lot of platforms online where you can start publishing your articles or selling your articles. Getting a writing job offline is very difficult. One of the major challenges associated with a writing career whether you want to start online or offline is your ability to write. You need very good language and writing skills, you also need skills to write almost anything.

Start Blogging

Blogging means writing a personalized post on any topic and publishing it on the internet. You can publish your post on a self-hosted website or a third-party website. Self-hosted website means a website that you built by buying a domain name and hosting and installing website software on the servers. A third-party site means a site that you don’t own but you can publish your blog post.

Blogging is not something that is work today and get paid tomorrow. Blogging is work today and get paid two years later. I understood this by blogging for more than 2 years. Before you think about making money through blogging you need to consider building your skills in multiple areas. Writing is a basic skill, you need more than that. You need to know how to write for the internet. Writing for the internet is entirely different from writing for the print medium. When you write for the internet, you need to write search-friendly content, in other words, you need to write something that is searched online. In order to do that you need SEO skills. You also need digital marketing skills, you need to know how you can market through search engines, social media, advertising, etc. Traffic is the key t earning from your blog, you need knowledge and skills to bring traffic.

Screenwriting

Writing screenplays is one of the best ways to make money through writing because screenplays get a lot of money if accepted. Do you know how JK Rowling made the most of money? Well, her books are best-selling, however, she made more money from her movie contracts compared to the books. Dan Brown is a popular author, but he made more money when his books were adapted for the screen. George RR Martin has made more money writing for TV shows compared to the money he made from his books. These are just a few examples; writers make more money writing for movies and TV shows compared to books. However, just because you can write does not mean you can write screenplays. You need special writing skills to write a screenplay. A screenplay is a story written through a camera lens. The screenplay will describe the scenes and dialogues through the camera. In order to sell your screenplay, you need a couple of things, one, a greatly written screenplay that captures the filmmaker's attention with the first scene, and two, originality. The story in your screenplay needs to be very original. It should not sound like something people have already seen in movies. Your screenplays also need great dialogues.

Copywriting

I have a few friends who work as copywriters in the real world. They make a lot of money by writing copies for big brands. However, they work for an ad agency. If you are not working for an ad agency or media house, it might be difficult to make money as a copywriter, though. When you want to make money as a copywriter online, it might be difficult though because it is rare to get employed by big brands. You might join freelance sites and apply for copywriting jobs. In order to become a copywriter, you need copywriting skills. Copywriting is not like writing an article or forum post You need to have mastery over the language, writing skills, and literary devices. You need the ability to express a profound idea through a few words. You do not have to leverage to write hundreds of words, you will have to express everything in less than 50 or even 30 words. Do you know what alliteration is, can you use this technique in writing? If you can't how can you write a copy? I am using this just as an example, there are many other literary devices that you need to have mastery.