Way back, I got here up with a listing of the way working freelancers can develop their writing revenue. In the event you’ve been questioning earn money writing—critical cash, that’s—this record is for you. In the event you’re a beginner, you’ll discover loads of helpful ideas right here, too.
I’ve given the record a serious replace, since issues do hold altering within the freelance world. Get pleasure from!
Easy methods to earn money writing
Aren’t you sick of the negativity on the market within the freelance writing neighborhood? I do know I’m.
You already know the spiel. Uninformed feedback like:
Print is lifeless.
All articles are actually $5 or much less.
I can’t imagine this Craigslist advert asks for 3 free samples.
The very fact is, some freelancers are nonetheless incomes an amazing dwelling, and you may, too. However first, you’ll should cease shopping for into the gloom and understand that what you earn is actually as much as you.
Take the angle that you’re an unstoppable drive of nature, and also you gained’t hand over till you’ve bought your freelance writing biz incomes what you want!
That can assist you take cost of your writing profession, I put collectively a listing of 100+ proactive issues you are able to do proper now to construct your revenue
Sure, there are a few affiliate hyperlinks under, for issues I personally know properly and might advocate (plus direct hyperlinks to a few helpful issues I’ve created for you).
Absolutely, a number of of those concepts may also help you bust a transfer towards higher pay? Right here we go.
113 methods to earn money out of your writing
I’ve organized the following tips into sections—these hyperlinks will take you straight to every subtopic:
Additional assist with mindset
- Cease doubting your self
- Cease ready
- Cease worrying about what folks consider you
- Cease questioning the place the shortcut is and begin taking motion
- Get a perspective in your challenges. Then, simply make the time to jot down
Networking
6. Develop your community. On LinkedIn, in particular person, in every single place you’re.
7. Get out and meet stay people. Folks offer you jobs, not computer systems.
8. Scared to go networking? Convey a good friend for assist. Then, take it sluggish. The primary time, simply go and observe and smile lots, after which go dwelling. Subsequent time, introduce your self to at least one particular person.
9. Begin a networking group, if there isn’t one in your space. Nice option to get identified by lots of people quick—as a result of everybody thanks the host, don’t they?
10. Create a “me” speech, so you already know what to say when folks ask what you do — after the half the place you say “I’m a contract author,” and so they say, “Actually? What sort of writing do you do?” (Because of IJ Schecter for this one.)
11. Comply with up in your networking, to begin constructing relationships with prospects you meet.
12. Ship former editors and managers job leads, in the event that they depart their job or get fired. Even when it doesn’t result in a rent for them, they’ll bear in mind you once they get their subsequent gig.
13. Get cool enterprise playing cards that say one thing about your distinctive writing abilities. Convey them with you in every single place.
14. Make a particular provide on your enterprise card, corresponding to a free seek the advice of. Retains it from being tossed out.
15. Think about getting a t-shirt or magnetized automobile signal that advertises your writing.
16. Get on LinkedIn. It’s an enormous search engine firms are utilizing to search out freelancers, each day. I do know, you hate social media. Do that one anyway.
17. Ask for suggestions, utilizing LinkedIn’s instrument. LinkedIn suggestions make the sale!
18. Reply to full-time job advertisements you see on LinkedIn, and ask in the event that they want a freelancer in the intervening time.
19. Put key phrases in your LinkedIn title, so your prospects can discover you. However them in your profile’s URL, too (you’ll be able to change it).
20. Discover folks on LinkedIn—former editors, advertising and marketing managers, co-workers — and reconnect.
21. Be part of LinkedIn teams—excellent spot to attach with individuals who may refer you’re employed.
22. Ship InMails to individuals who’ve seen your profile, if they appear like prospects. Ask in the event that they’re in search of a author.
Social media
23. Get on X/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads and share helpful stuff your purchasers would really like. Begin constructing authority.
24. Discover editors on social media and pitch them.
25. Discover area of interest social-media platforms on your specialty. New platforms come up on a regular basis. Experiment and see the place you join with good leads.
26. Think about making an attempt Fb or Google advertisements to advertise your enterprise.
Author web sites
27. Put up a author web site. Exhibits you’re a professional. Want inspiration? Listed below are 5 necessities to incorporate in your writing web site.
28. Enhance your author web site. A clear, sharp, mobile-enabled web site makes an enormous distinction within the charges you’ll be able to command.
29. Make it simpler for folks to contact you in your web site. Kill that contact kind and put your contacts proper in your header, for example.
30. search engine optimisation your web site. Get key phrases your purchasers would use to search out your kind of freelance author into your URL, headline, tagline, and duplicate.
31. Solicit extra testimonials from earlier purchasers and add them to your web site.
Prospecting
32. Learn extra extensively so you’ll be able to discover extra story concepts to pitch.
33. Get a Ebook of Lists on your nearest main market, for a prepared supply of high quality company leads.
34. Get The Writers Market with on-line assist, so you’ll be able to simply analysis publications.
35. Collaborate with designers and different related-industry professionals. Refer one another enterprise.
36. Observe prospect nibbles that haven’t panned out but, and hold following up. Ship them articles of curiosity—something to maintain the connection.
37. Search for ongoing initiatives. Even common running a blog gigs can add up to massive income, and allow you to begin every month with some pre-booked income.
Running a blog
38. Write weblog posts in batches. Large time-saver, whether or not it’s on your personal weblog or a shopper’s.
39. Plan out weblog posts with a scheduling instrument corresponding to WordPress Editorial Calendar.
40. Put a “rent me” tab in your weblog, so folks know you need gigs.
41. Deal with your weblog as a writing pattern. Have a clear design, present you perceive social media, and write each publish prefer it’s a $1-a-word journal task.
Negotiating
42. Don’t work and not using a contract. In any other case, your purchasers haven’t any obligation to pay you, ever. Be sure that contract defines funds phrases, so that you’re clear whenever you’ll be paid.
43. Ask new enterprise purchasers their finances for the challenge. Typically, they’ll let you know.
44. Don’t quote your value in a primary shopper assembly, for those who’re a beginner. Inform them you’ll get again to them tomorrow along with your proposal.
45. Ask for extra money, if the scope of the gig expands.
46. Make preliminary enterprise writing contracts brief, say, for under 60 to 90 days. Then, negotiate a greater charge when it expires, primarily based in your rising information of the shopper’s enterprise.
47. Outline a small first challenge with new enterprise purchasers. Get began, see for those who like working for this shopper, and don’t get locked into an extended contract you slowly understand you’re underpaid on.
Operating your biz
48. Cease writing for content material mills. Only a street to nowhere.
49. Cease shopping for into the pay-per-click dream. Ditto pay-per-view.
50. Cease bidding on jobs on-line, the place you’re competing with a whole bunch of different writers. Decide out of the race to the underside.
51. Ship payments out extra promptly. Many firms solely minimize checks as soon as a month, so don’t miss the cutoff. Higher but, negotiate for higher fee phrases and receives a commission quicker. Higher money circulation is nearly as good as a elevate.
52. Minimize your bills. Then, you’ll really feel much less stress to take low-pay gigs and have extra high quality advertising and marketing time.
53. Know the home-business tax breaks. Retaining extra of your cash has the very same impact as incomes extra.
54. Think about using a co-working area for the networking, recent perspective, and referrals from different enterprise house owners working there.
55. Pitch larger firms. Greater actually is best, in our line of labor.
56. Begin a retirement account and make common deposits. Cost extra, so you have got sufficient to place some away.
Queries
58. Ship simultaneous queries, even when magazines’ tips say to not.
59. Ship a number of concepts in your question. Ups your odds of success.
60. Don’t wait to listen to again on these question letters. Ship extra question letters instantly.
61. Learn to write nice queries, for those who’re not getting assignments.
62. Do extra analysis and discover new markets. New on-line markets are rising each day and new magazines are began.
63. Pitch publications’ web sites, too. They might additionally assign articles individually for his or her web site—and vice versa.
64. Search for buyer magazines, whenever you’re buying, on the dentist, wherever you go. Learn, pitch them—you already know their merchandise.
65. Learn firm newsletters and magazines you get digitally and within the mail. Pitch them.
66. Question better-paying magazines. Significantly, you’ll be able to solely get $75 out of your native mags for thus lengthy. Proper?
67. Resell your articles, for those who’ve solely bought first or restricted rights.
68. Recycle unused components of interviews you’ve carried out into new tales.
69. Write multiple article off the identical set of analysis, for noncompeting markets.
70. Ask interview sources what else is occurring of their {industry}. Go away with one other story thought.
71. Don’t overreport. You’re not going to have the ability to match eight sources right into a 500-word article.
72. Be taught to jot down to size. Much less rewriting means time saved, and extra revenue potential within the 12 months.
73. Maintain thought lists, so that you at all times have extra concepts to pitch if an editor asks.
74. Have one other thought prepared, each time you flip in an article.
Advertising 101
75. Think about including companies to your shopper combine, for those who solely write for magazines. They have a tendency to pay higher and quicker.
76. Ship custom-made prospecting emails. The remainder is simply spam.
77. Make chilly calls. Simply seize the telephone ebook, choose up the telephone, name advertising and marketing administrators and ask in the event that they use freelance writers.
78. Ship junk mail postcards. Few writers try this, so you’ll be able to actually stand out.
79. Cease responding to Craigslist advertisements. Want I clarify?
80. Discover higher job boards the place the businesses should pay to publish a list. LinkedIn’s board, for example.
81. Discover area of interest job boards for industries the place you specialize.
82. Have a advertising and marketing plan. In the event you don’t know the place you’re going, guess the place you find yourself?
Inventive advertising and marketing
83. Write an e-book and promote it. Then, assist purchasers do it.
84. Placed on free lessons on your prospects, both on-line or in particular person.
85. Create a free, informational report to present your prospects, with writing or advertising and marketing ideas. Finish along with your contact data or a particular provide.
86. Create a publication your prospects can subscribe to, as a way to keep in contact.
87. Analyze your purchasers, and the way you bought them. Which advertising and marketing strategies paid off in the most effective purchasers? Do extra of that.
88. Donate your writing companies to a charity public sale—you’ll meet a prospect, and get some good PR.
89. Volunteer for trigger, and acquire useful contacts. I as soon as wrote for my regional library system’s publication, and have spoken on Society of Skilled Journalists panels, for example.
90. Enter free or low-cost writing contests—it will get your work in entrance of editors who may rent you.
91. Get listed in on-line useful resource guides of service suppliers {and professional} associations in your goal industries. Usually, it’s free.
92. Bid on authorities contracts. Get certified to bid straight or save the paperwork and join with businesses which can be bidding contracts—usually, these are massive initiatives at first rate charges.
Consumer administration
93. Increase charges for brand new purchasers. Then, carry on doing that, till you’re incomes what you need.
94. Increase your charges for present purchasers.
95. Increase your charges yearly within the fall, to take impact the next 12 months.
96. Ask for shopper referrals from all of your present purchasers, previous purchasers, associates, and former co-workers.
97. Write for extra components of your current purchasers. Does that writer produce other magazines? That firm produce other divisions?
Productiveness
98. Rise up earlier. Do a block of selling earlier than everybody else will get up.
99. Keep up later. Work within the quiet, whereas others sleep.
100. Quit tv. You gained’t imagine how far more time you have got.
101. Get extra train. You’ll be more healthy and higher in a position to focus and write.
102. Take a time without work. I’m speaking no less than in the future offline every week. Solely you’ll be able to forestall burnout.
103. Take mini-breaks the place you rise up out of your laptop and stroll round a bit.
104. Outsource boring duties that rob you of productive writing time.
105. Know your chronobiology. Write at your best and artistic time of day.
106. Write what you’re feeling impressed on, as an alternative of the piece that’s “prime precedence.” Drift, and also you’ll be extra environment friendly.
107. Drop your lowest-paying shopper, to make time to market and discover better-paying purchasers. I’ve but to satisfy a author who ever regretted dropping a shopper who wasn’t definitely worth the aggravation.
108. Log your each day actions, and get rid of stuff you try this aren’t leading to revenue.
Help and studying
109. Take a category and discover ways to market higher. Or, be taught a brand new writing specialty.
110. Be part of a author’s neighborhood and get assist and suggestions from friends.
111. Be taught to jot down exhausting stuff. Write about actuarial forecasting, superior washing-machine know-how, or software program growth. Discover the niches the place they’ll by no means get sufficient good writers.
112. Be taught to jot down gross sales copy. Serving to purchasers make more cash will at all times pay properly, and there’s at all times a necessity.
113. Find out about profitable forms of writing corresponding to white papers and particular reviews. In the event you lack journalism coaching, be taught to jot down articles, to get in better-paying magazines.
Questioning earn money writing? Choose a approach
There you have got it! Greater than 100 paradigm-changing concepts for rising your writing revenue.
Clearly, there are a ton of methods right here. All of them gained’t be best for you. However in there someplace are issues you ought to be doing in your writing biz and aren’t.
To make it simple so that you can hold this brainstorm sheet, I’ve turned it right into a obtain PDF—get it by submitting the shape under. That approach, you’ll be able to come again and simply evaluate for brand new methods, and also you’ll by no means surprise earn extra money from writing once more.