Deciding which way to go as a content writer has been a struggle for me since day 1.
The advancement of digitalization has made grabbing attention of the audience through content a problematic one.
I feel writing as a hobby is no doubt a never-ending journey.
It is largely used by business professionals to further grow their businesses online and successfully nurture leads into their services or products.
Always remember, Content is King. Presently, you can find a need for content in almost every industry.
Each passing day opens up a door to upgrade your content writing skills since the area is so vast for one to explore just within a couple of days.
Being affected by such Covid-19 pandemic situation, are you looking for ways to turn your hobby into a rewarding one? If so, then you are in the right place.
With such a wide range of changes witnessed within the online space, there persists opportunities for you to earn profit as a content writer.
Here, we will make you aware of 7 best ways to earn money as a content writer in order of their complexity involved backed by associated tips or tricks therewith.
Starting as an academic content writer can potentially get you close to 40K if you’re from India and $400 / week if you are from international boundaries.
You don’t need to have a diploma or a college degree in order to get started.
Well, just being a College pass out with no prior work experience at all, I kind of spontaneously joined a well-reputed Academic content writing Company as a fresher.
Following months of struggle, I discovered that this involves initiation of an attempt to present a piece of content that is teemed with logic, reasoning, and facts.
Such teeming needs to be in alignment with the job description that is provided from your clients’ end.
In case you are a newbie in this regard, you too can go ahead and kick start as an entry-level Academic content writer.
Although, as per my belief and experience, selection of this level would enable you to earn less than in comparison to the industry level. However, the effort you need to exert in the initial years might seem immense.
But never mind, you eventually will be able to reap the associated success and enhance your profit margin using your expertise in no time.
The more effort you put to comprehend the distinct tonality, style, structure, and language that you are to deliver within the content, the more you will become capable of implementing your innovation into it.
An innovative creation consisting of some well-researched ideas or facts and that too within the given deadline is likely to pave your way towards perfection.
Besides this, I desperately want you Not to Miss Out the various other areas of Content Writing in any way!
Those who have already attained heights as an Academic Content Writer and are willing to get more skilled in this field of content writing can undertake the following skill development courses or programs.
I know the terms ‘Course’ and ‘Programs’ might make you get into a confused mindset since investing upon these is not what you planned for.
Don’t Worry, whatever I am suggesting is some of the courses and programs that are totally FREE.
Such an initiation to indulge in Content Writing courses would also help you become a Certified Content Writer and enhance your portfolio in turn.
Some suggested platforms are listed as follows:
First of all, I would like to make you aware about the Udemy platform.
Over there, you can find a number of FREE as well as PAID courses.
You can select any based on your preferred interest area.
Step 1: Once you enter into the Home Page of Udemy, go ahead and use the search button above to discover the list of courses available as per area of interest.
Step 2: On obtaining the search results, you might feel that you have been misguided since they won’t be able to find the free courses as I promised you.
Don’t worry! Just hover your mouse to the left and there you will get to see a number of options.
Click on ‘Price’ and then select ‘Free’ or ‘Paid’ whichever you prefer.
Now, courses will be shown to you as per your need. Not only Price, but you can also select your preferred language, exact topic, courses as per your Level of experience and many more.
Step 3: Now, the only thing you will do is Smart Choice and invest your time on those.
But remember, signing into a course and then forgetting it the next day is not going to help you in any way.
Actually, this is exactly what I did when I was a newbie in this industry.
It was like I loved signing into a number of Free courses at a time just by checking out their corresponding ratings and keep telling myself “I will start those from tomorrow”. But that tomorrow hardly used to come.
Then, to end this fuss, I switched myself to ‘Paid’ ones just to develop accountability on my end.
Since I invested my hard-earned money into it, the desire to learn the strategies and techniques to write some spellbound content grew.
This has only been guided by the motive on my end to regain double the money I invested through my work.
Such a strategy managed to give me a two-way benefit. It made me learn the trick to learn writing professionally and grab the attention of readers in the first place.
Secondly, the fact that I continued to implement the things in practical terms while learning not only made me well-acquainted with the pros and cons of the industry but also helped formulate a number of samples.
Presentation of these very samples with slight modifications largely contributed to client acquisition over time.
Thus, on this note, Besides just going through this course, I would recommend you to get into the implementation phase in your leisure hours.
A small implementation trick specifically for Beginners:
Like I did, among the many Content writing platforms for beginners, you too can create a personal account in Blogspot.com. Over there, start writing whatever content you feel like through implementation of the tactics learnt accordingly.
This, again, will help you out in a two-fold manner.
Firstly, practice of rigorous blog writing will lead to further improvisation of your writing ability backed by exploration of better means to research on your chosen topic. This will definitely add value to your content.
Secondly, attempting to practice writing in a number of niches will over time help you identify the niche in which you are confident enough and that at the same time is profitable too.
Such identification is necessary since I feel opting to become ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’ is unlikely to help you acquire the desired profit level and make you remain at a beginner or intermediate level.
Attaining the Expert Level, thereby calls for a need on your end to keep practicing the tactics you will be learning throughout the course. For this, you can initiate implementation of ‘The Golden Circle’ rule while presenting content.
By The Golden Circle, what I mean to convey is that during presentation of content, people do mostly focus on the ‘Why’ factor and then it is subsequently followed by ‘ How’ and ‘What’ factors.
Let me explain this in a better way!
It has been quite a general trend among the audience that they in the very first place show a tendency to find out the way a particular product or service is going to help them or make their lives easier in other words.
This calls for an approach on your end to initially develop a need on their end by aligning your content of presentation to some of their urgent needs.
In subsequent terms, the ‘How’ factor needs to be developed thus creating an impression that their problem has some specific solution which they were pondering over for quite some time.
This automatically shows a high probability on their end to find out ‘What’ is that remedy, mostly a product or service that can act as the best possible solution on their end.
Appropriate presentation of these factors can prove to be of greater help on your end if by chance you are planning to take over the Affiliate Marketing field through your content strategy. Such strategy often goes a long way to help grab attention of your targeted audience thus curbing down your bounce rate in turn.
Note: In case, the terms ‘Affiliate Marketing’ or ‘Bounce Rate’ seem new to you, do comment below, I will be shortly coming up with some of my short blog posts related to Digital Marketing.
Some FREE Online Creative Writing Course Bundles suggested for you
HubSpot for business owners
You will find the Free Content Writing Certification Course of HubSpot to be a globally recognized one that will train you through helpful videos, interactive quizzes, study guides and practical exercises as and when necessary.
In case you are a business owner and planning to create a scalable content strategy for your Company’s website then this is the right place for you. On completion of this course, you are most likely to attain mastery in content writing.
Throughout the course period, you will get to learn everything starting from planning or creation of targeted content to promotion or repurposing and analytics thus giving you a professional edge in the process.
Certification Course from Coursera by Wesleyan
Out of 5, this course has a 4.7 rating and is mainly divided into four prime parts which you can complete in any order as per your convenience. Successful completion of this will enable you to get aware of techniques to write compelling and unique stories for your audience thus attain error-free professionalism in due time.
Skillshare’s Online Creative Writing Course
Here, you will be able to come across a number of courses related to specific subject matters. Remember, the course will cost you a minimal amount but prior to buying and judging its effectiveness, you can get a free trial for a month. Through this, your creative writing ability will be enhanced since throughout the course it would make you well-aware of the fundamentals involved.
Assuming that now you have a clear idea of how to organize your content and get aware of strategies to make them reader friendly enough, I am introducing you to some more vivid areas of content writing here.
Do you think that writing content for Lead Magnet clients badly demands an easy formula for understanding buyer persona and associated value proposition?
Well, while working in this area, I discovered that the only way out to this is enough of practising.
This contributes to enhancement of your capability to present content as per psychology of your targeted audience and not merely be moved by their pain points. This, in a way, leads to speeding up your writing and research ability.
However, on the other hand, opting for this enabled me to acquire exposure to some extent in the field of Google Analytics.
As a beginner I hardly had any knowledge about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The fact that such lead magnets are hardly published on online platforms eliminates the need for focusing on SEO for the time-being.
Now, what exactly is Lead magnet?
By lead magnet, it mainly indicates a marketing term for a free service or item aimed at gathering contact details of targeted audience.
This involves the need of content writers to frame creative trial subscriptions such as e-newsletters, e-books, downloadable PDF checklist, whitepapers or subscription samples for your clients.
This, thereby, automatically emerges as an initial responsibility on your end to carefully understand the buyer persona and corresponding value proposition such that the content published turns out to be interesting or persuasive enough.
This is essential such that while re-targeting, your client manages to turn those targeted individuals into customers of the Company concerned.
If you wish to write an absolutely irresistible lead magnet, here’s I am suggesting you a number of ideas.
Bring into light a major issue faced by your audience: Your lead magnet should aim at solving a real problem for your targeted audience. The lead magnet should be something that must possess high actual as well as perceived value. People usually prefer instant gratification thus, right delivery is a necessity.
Be specific and promise some real quick win: Avoid creating a lead magnet that is something very generalized. It should be a real quick win for your audience and something that is easily achievable. More the specification displayed in your lead magnet, the greater remains the chance of conversion rate.
Should convey much value to your audience: Remember! You must design your content in such a way that it conveys some unique value proposition to your audience.
For instance, portray some quantified value and specify ways products or services delivered by your client helps solve and improve situations. This is crucial since usually the prime aim behind publishing your lead magnet lies in turning the potential leads into customers successfully.
Do you face real difficulty to enhance the value of your content and maintain a smooth value at time of content rewriting? Now you must be wondering if a content is already written, from where does there arise a need to rewrite those?
Well! Frankly speaking, content rewriting has presently been a trendy one and this can help you gradually learn SEO too.
Here I am explaining to you its importance and its relation to SEO.
See, as we all know, Google is a cloud based software and development of its search engine started back in 1996. The software, guided by the motive to provide useful and rich content as per expectations of its intent users, consistently updates its algorithms.
The new updates duly focus on improving rank of pages in order to provide its users useful or in-depth lists of content.
Now as a writer, the updates generated are too small to be easily noticed. Every moment, introduction of such fundamental changes disrupts the way SEO of any content is initially done.
Various SEO tools such as Ubersuggest.com, Surfer SEO or launching of Rank Tracker have helped me to a large extent to sync my content with that of Google Analytics Account.
In this context, if you are a newbie, prior to fully taking up content rewriting, you are required to learn a number of things. They are:
For this too, you can access courses from Udemy or check out my upcoming blogs on Digital Marketing for better knowledge.
Now comes the implementation part,
Following acquisition of clients who desire to refresh their content in order to rank on Google’s first page, the rewriting might require you to:
in order to match the competitors’ level.
Taking up such a content rewriting job with gradual passage of time is likely to seem easy specially for the newbies.
This is because such rewriting jobs hardly require you to formulate content newly designed from scratch Here, unlike academic content writing, you can also expect a flat fee from your client in advance.
These content writing ideas are somewhat similar by nature. Don’t get afraid just by listening to these terms. In this regard, skills required for a content writer are not much in this regard. At the same time, there remains a chance for you to see some of those content go viral and earn profit beyond expectation.
Video Script
It is the foundation or blueprint of videos published digitally.
Video script examples include writing content for visual mediums such as commercials, feature films or creation of dialogue and storyline of any script.
Here, you are required to use your imaginative mind in order to realise and build the storyline in an innovative manner.
Remember, an increasing number of audiences presently watch videos thereby don’t let such an opportunity go away ever.
The steps to be undertaken are as follows:
Step 1: Understand the scenario provided by your client and write a brief of the video in the first instance.
Step 2: Now, using your writing skill and creativity, frame an interesting or catchy story to spread your story.
Step 3: Remember, don’t make your story too wordy. Just keep it short, simple, and sweet.
Speak in a tone that the audience targeted by your Client accepts and understands. For instance, Emojis can be used if possible to add a feeling of personalization to your content.
Step 4: To reach perfection, read out your script a number of times. At the same time, keep re-checking your script against the briefing provided to you from beforehand.
Voice-overs
Writing a voice-over script is quite equivalent to framing a story with some conversational tone or pace.
This is essential such that the whole essence of the story can be conveyed to the audience targeted to the best of your ability.
For you to find it easy, I am relating some basic steps such that you find no difficulty to manage your voice-over clients.
The steps are:
Step 1: Try finding a popular voice-over content preferably related to the subject matter of your content.
This can help you get aware of some popular style or strategy and help your content to earn publicity.
Step 2: Try recording your content on your own prior to finalization.
Hearing the recorded version of your own content can help you self-judge it and bring about amendments if necessary.
Step 3: Finally, you can mention the kind of effect or music that you feel might go with the content for extra approachability to the targeted audience.
However, this is completely optional.
Press Releases
As per my experience is concerned, press releases demand specific but brief information from your end. Information can be anything related to recent happenings of any sort such as product launch, or coverage of events and circumstances.
Opting to publish content for Press Release undoubtedly demands your creative writing ability to a large extent.
Here are some tips for you to write some excellent press releases.
Tip 1: Try to keep your content simple and short. Avoid using jargons.
You can humanize it through addition of meaningful quotes within your content.
Tip 2: Headline is the prime aspect of your press release.
The very heading will convince your readers that your content has a story worth telling.
To make it crispy enough, you can apply the trick to distill your entire story into less than ten words.
Such distillation is somewhat necessary to keep the audience stay inclined to your content.
Remember! matching your content to the heading is a dire necessity.
If not done so, your audience might feel misguided thus reducing your chances to flourish as a successful content writer.
In case the content is released via online mode, the headline should be articulated well, developing willing on part of your audience to click it.
Tip 3: Always focus on adding more relevant information such that the audience finds your content handy and informative enough.
On this note, you can subdivide your content into three major parts.
Introduction: By now, I think you might have been well-aware that readers only bother to read just the beginning few lines of a content.
Thereby, the introductory portion of your content must contain a brief summary of your press release. In other words, it must portray everything you want to convey to your audience through your content.
Body: Over here, you can break your content into a number of short paragraphs relating to every detailed information you desire to share with your audience.
However, before publishing those content pieces, you are expected to become double sure of them such that you don’t land up in any controversy.
In addition, to make it more authentic and add further value to your content, you can add some famous quotes or add some relevant statistics within it.
Boilerplate: This section must specifically be dedicated to clearly summarise the compelling story of the organisation or brand or personality you are covering in your press release.
This requires inclusion of a clear and standy description such that the essence of your content can be included in corporate communications easily.
This can be a summary of the mission or vision, history or background information and current outlook of the person or brand duly considered within your content.
Tip 4: Towards the end of your press release, a call-to-action section is usually included.
At time of publishing your press release on an online platform, your call-to-action sentence must clearly convey what exactly you want your readers to do.
This holds essential to help your audience remain engaged with you or rather your content for a longer period of time.
In case you are working on behalf of some client, then this is most likely to be as per your client’s wish.
Besides this, you need to keep space for the Media Contact details section in your press release to make it more authentic.
The section is likely to provide all valuable information such as specification of name, e-mail address and contact number of the person distributing the Press Release to maintain transparency.
Website content mainly demands inclusion of creative elements for your own or for your client’s website.
Alignment of keywords specific to the type of business concerned need to be the prime goal for you while writing content on designated websites.
This becomes essential to improve the website’s SEO thus making the search process easier for the users in turn.
For this too, I am providing you the steps you can follow to make your website content an effective one.
Step 1: Determine the purpose of your website content prior to randomly publishing any content in the website.
Identifying your audience is also essential at the same time since websites play an innate role.
You can gain more followers by increasing your overall social media footprint.
Although the owner of websites bear the full right to publish any content on their website from time to time as per their wish.
However, from my personal experience, I can tell that selection of a particular niche from beforehand is crucial to acquire an influential position in the targeted sector.
Remember! Always focus on portraying benefits over features.
This automatically can enable you convert a greater number of your followers into paying customers leading to greater acquisition of profit margin from your website.
Step 2: Initiate thorough research on competing websites working on similar niche selected by you or your client.
A detailed research on Top 10 of them and understanding the kind of content published by them in those high-ranking websites can enable you to get an idea of the way you should present your website.
Following this, you can go back to your drawing board and develop a content strategy rather a content plan for at least 6-months as per current needs of your targeted industry.
To learn more about ways you can formulate content plans and work as a team following identification of SEO keywords using tools already mentioned above, you can check out some of my upcoming blogs.
Step 3: Segregate your Web Page into a number of sections such as:
In a similar fashion, you can keep on adding pages to your website as and when necessary thus managing to build a strong online presence in the process.
Now, there remains a responsibility on your end to write relevant content in each of these pages.
The content needs to be placed in a way that customers find it beneficial to spend their valuable time there and not lead to an increase in the website’s bounce rate in the process.
Step 4: Make necessary edits required from time to time and most importantly optimise the page for SEO.
Now, such optimization can be considered to be the most important aspect of your Web page.
This usually assists search engines to adequately analyse the overall website as well as the list of content associated with it.
It is only after this analysis that it becomes easier for Google to detect your website as a relevant one against searchers’ intent search.
The more number of times your Web Page will appear in search results, the better will be the ranking obtained by Google’s search page in turn.
By blogging, it refers to initiation of informal diary-style text entries better known as posts within self-published websites of yours or your client.
The hallmarks of blogging mainly include frequent updates and usage of informal language. This opens opportunities for your targeted audience to engage with you and start conversation.
I understand purchasing a website domain and related plugins might not be possible or rather might not prove fruitful in the first instance.
So, I believe prior to all this, as I said before also, understanding your niche is highly important to become an expert blogger.
In this case, I would suggest you select your niche on the basis of existing market factors and not just by blindly following your passions.
Besides, understanding the market demand level, you must also judge the professional leverage and budget potential of your audience in order to avoid selection of some non-lucrative niche.
I am suggesting this since I noticed many new bloggers fail to get exposure to enough market demand and fail to scale traffic as a result.
For instance, such newbies forget to leverage connections and networking to their strategic advantage. For this, as I did, you too can adopt the following two approaches:
Approach 1: You can create a BlogSpot account for Free by signing in to Blogger and then choosing a blog URL or address accompanied by a blog name of your choice.
Through this, you can gain access to a free publishing platform with a default BlogSpot domain that is jointly owned by Google and Blogger platform.
Here, you can not only transform all your creative ideas into reality and with time you can kick start your content writing journey from home with zero investment involved.
Remember, to earn money, it is important for you to identify pain points of your audiences and make your domain rank faster in Google.
Now, the obvious question comes, how can you earn money by publishing posts on BlogSpot?
Way 1: By using Affiliate Links in your write-ups.
This can help you earn free income the moment one purchases any product or service mentioned by you in your blog using the links provided
Way 2: By placing advertisements on your blogger site
These include Cost Per Click (CPC) ads which can enable you to get payment the moment any of your readers click on the ads placed by you.
Place the ads in the form of banners or sidebar within your content.
Way 3: By publishing sponsored posts within your blog
Sponsored posts are usually sponsored as an advertisement by companies to draw greater popularity through moderation and user promotion.
Remember, publishing such posts in your blog usually becomes possible in exchange for some minimal fee
By introducing some income option in your blog, you can definitely enhance your client base if promoted adequately in the right platform at the right time.
It is a largely observed fact that successful bloggers remain capable of earning over 7-figures in a year while others hardly generate any income.
In general terms, a content writer salary is expected to be around $2,000 recurring monthly in a year.
Now, coming to the challenges you are or might be facing as a blogger.
The real challenge lies in generating profit from blogs that generate visitors fewer than 1,000 on a daily basis.
So, your focus should definitely be upon publishing some SEO friendly and unique content in order to acquire 10,000 visitors to your site on a monthly basis.
This, in turn, can automatically enable you to easily monetize your content and get access to a profitable revenue stream in turn.
Approach 2: In case you fail to attract a sufficiently large number of visitors to your blog post in the first instance, you can go ahead and practice Ghostwriting for your client.
At this stage, Ghostwriting approach can prove helpful on your end to bring about constant improvement in writing skills and that too with imposition of lesser responsibility than before.
Acquiring a Ghostwriting client can prove to be a smoothing one. You can do so by displaying your good writing abilities that you might have already portrayed in your BlogSpot website.
You might be happy to know that Ghostwriters are usually well-instructed and are provided with relevant links, titles and other relevant materials prior to taking over any project.
This can somewhat enable you avoid burdening yourself with a number of resources at the same time.
In this case, there hardly remains any need on your end to look for publishers or sponsorship but just write the content.
This can help you utilize your leisure hours in learning ways to promote yourself and your personal blogs on various platforms thus exploring the various aspects of blogging.
Writing a book opens up the opportunity for you to write on a subject that holds important for you and publish it.
This can enable you to express your creativity and share your viewpoint with others.
This, thereby, is likely to act as a lifetime asset on your end. Undertaking the initiative to write books can enable you to reignite your passion of writing as an author.
Publishing book contributes to possession of a professional piece of content that not only enhances your brand name but also acts as a money generator.
In this world of digitalization, you can opt to publish eBooks during the initial years of establishing yourself as an author.
Publishing eBooks can enable you get an idea of how well you are accepted as an author in the industry. Besides this, such publishing will involve relatively low update cost and zero involvement of any shipping cost.
Thus, such a strategy can prove to be a cost minimizing one on your end but not at the cost of restricted popularity.
Hopefully, by now, you have some idea about the vivid areas of content writing and the ways it can enable you get exposure to multiple revenue streams. Ideas are gold and SEO acts as the key to attract your targeted audience.
So, have patience and never let any of your ideas go waste. This should be your prime motto in order to earn exposure as a successful content writer.
Let me know in the comments below about the kind of content writing works you have done till now and your associated experiences.
