5 Great Ways to Get Paid to Write

Let's say goodbye to the myth of the starving artist.

Every writer and creative professional deserves to get paid... and there's no reason why you can't.

In this week's mini-episode, I cover 5 great ways writers can get paid for their hard creative work, list the pros and cons and offer some ways to get started faster.

Resources from the episode

• AWAI.com
• How to Write a Book
• Where to Find Writing Jobs
• The Best Online Writing Courses

Transcript

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Become a Writer Today podcast with Bryan Colins. Here you'll find practical advice and interviews for all kinds of writers. 

Bryan Colins:
Would you like to get paid to write? Hi there. My name is Bryan Colins and welcome to the Become a Writer Today podcast. Getting paid what you're worth for your hard creative work is something we're going to talk about in this week's podcast episode. And I'm actually going to talk about five different ways you can get paid for writing, whether it be directly or indirectly. And I've used each of the five ways for getting paid as part of my business over the years. And I've learned about the pros and cons about what works and what doesn't work. I'm going to share that with you. 

Bryan Colins:
Okay. Number one, the first way that you can get paid from writing and it's probably the quickest way to do it is to become a freelance writer. Basically a freelance writer is somebody who writes for publications and websites and gets a check or a lodgement into their PayPal account for their hard work. And to become a freelance writer you're going to need a few things. You're going to need clients. You're going to need a niche to specialize in. And you're also going to need a willingness to work with editors and accept critical feedback about your work. 

Bryan Colins:
Years ago, I actually worked as a freelance writer as a technology journalist for a number of Irish publications in Ireland. And it paid relatively well at the time, but then the recession happened, and this was back in 2008, 2009. And as you can imagine, who was the first to be booted out the door when the recession happened? Well, it was freelance writers. So that meant I was very quickly out of work. Now there's no recession today. And there are lots of opportunities for freelance writers online. I still dabble in a bit of freelance writing, writing for publications like Forbes and so on. 

Bryan Colins:
And if you're interested in becoming a freelance writer, I've actually put together a resource that explains how freelancers can find work and get paid. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes, or you can simply visit, becomeawritertoday.com/writing-jobs. Now, the next way you can get paid from writing is a little bit like freelance writing, but it's a bit more specialized. You can become a copywriter. Basically a copywriter is somebody who writes words that sell, what do I mean words that sell? Well, you could be writing a long form sales letter for a client or a customer, or even for yourself for your blog, which I'll get to in a few moments. Or you could be writing emails that you use to sell products or services, or you could be writing a blog post or a product review that talks about something that customers and readers can get value from.

Bryan Colins:
It takes training and experience to become a copywriter. And if you're interested in getting started, I recommend checking out copywriting training by American Writers & Artists Inc. I've taken a number of their training courses over the past year, and they really are excellent. You can find them at awai.com. Just look for their masters copywriting training program. Now, the pros of being a copywriter are that it can become extremely profitable if you specialize in a niche. So a niche is simply just a specialism. It could be technology, which is what I specialized in. It could be healthcare, it could be personal development, it could be sports and so on. You'll also need to find clients. And that's something that takes a bit of training too. The downside of becoming a copywriter is not every writer feels comfortable with writing something that's so commercial, and that is more about somebody else's business or product rather than an idea that they have for a story. Copywriting is also a little bit scientific. So you need to bring a bit of analysis into this type of writing too. 

Bryan Colins:
Okay. So number three, the third way that you can get paid from writing is by writing and publishing books. And this is one of my favorite pursuits. Now I love writing books. I love the feel of a book in my hand and the sense of accomplishment when you reach the end. And when you upload it all to stores like Amazon and press publish, and then a couple of days later, you get the copy back and you can say to yourself that, "I did this." It feels a bit more permanent than an article than a sales page, than a blog post or anything else that you can spend your valuable creative hours on.

Bryan Colins:
The other great thing about writing books apart from them being fun to write, is it helps you build credibility as a writer because you can call yourself an author. And that's a great way of finding clients if you want to build your freelance business, or finding students, if you're going to offer coaching or courses, which is something I'll cover in a moment. The downsides of writing and publishing books are that it's one of the more time intensive ways to earn an income as a writer, because it can take many months to take a book from the initial idea to something that you could publish on Amazon. And you also need to invest in the book to, great editing, to a book cover designer, and also to a proofreader and all those things, which will turn it into a product that you'd be proud to sell. But writing books is still something that's close to my heart. And I actually have a tutorial that you could find at becomeawritertoday.com, how to write a book.

Bryan Colins:
So the fourth way that you can earn an income from writing is through blogging and blogging is a skill in itself. But basically if you set up a blog about a particular area or a specialism and you write about that consistently, and over time, you will attract readers who are interested in that topic to your site. And I suppose I hope that's one way that you found me because you were interested in practical writing advice and you found, Become a Writer Today. And then once you have readers who are visiting your site, you can offer products and services that you use with a discount. And then if readers want to use that product or service, you get paid a small commission and you should be completely upfront about that. Or you can run ads on your site if you're getting a bit of traffic. And then you can earn hundreds or thousands of dollars each month and maybe your site's getting lots of traffic. Or another way that you can earn money from blogging is to offering coaching to your readers whereby you'll get on the phone with them or on Skype or Zoom. 

Bryan Colins:
And you help them solve a problem and that will be part of a premium coaching package that you offer them. Now, the pros of blogging are that it really is a business that you can control because unlike setting up shop on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, if you've got your own blog on WordPress, then you're completely in control of the relationship between you and your audience. And you can decide what direction to take your business in. So you could start by blogging about personal development, and then you can create a book around personal development and offer that to your readers. Or alternatively you could pivot from personal development to another topic. It's just a fascinating way of connecting with readers online today. Of course, there's a couple of downsides to blogging, it is quite time intensive if you're serious about it.

Bryan Colins:
You'll also need to learn a little of marketing. You'll need to study the basics of email marketing. It'll help if you understand tools like Google Analytics. And you'll also need to be prepared to invest in a few things for your blog. So that could be a premium WordPress team. It could be good web hosting so your site doesn't go down when you get lots of traffic and it could be software for creating things like landing pages. If all of that sounds technical, then you might need to invest in outsourcing. So as you can see, there's lots of different secondary skills that you'll need to learn if you want to earn money from blogging. But that said, blogging is a great way of earning an income as a writer, and it can be extremely profitable.

Bryan Colins:
So number five, the fifth way of earning an income as a writer is to consider what other products and services you can create based on your work? What do I mean by other products and services? Well, let's say you wrote a book about fitness for example, well you could turn that book into an online course, and then you could sell that online course at a higher price point because people like to consume information in different ways. So your book will be about how to run a marathon in under four hours. And then you could turn that into a two or three hour video course that you sell in your own site if you've a blog, or if you don't, you could use another platform like Udemy, although you'll have to sell it at a discount. And I've actually found that once you have a book or a series of articles, it doesn't take too long to turn them into a series of videos and some less materials that you could offer students. 

Bryan Colins:
You just have to be prepared to accept feedback from your students and use this to improve the quality of your course. And you also have to be prepared to sell your course at a higher price point to your book. And you may be thinking, "But I don't know enough to teach a course." Well the simple fact is you probably do because everybody has a hobby or an interest or a passion that they know way more about than our friends, or our colleagues, or our family members, and you'd be surprised how much people want to hear from you. And of course the online course industry is huge today. And I've created courses over the years. And it really is a great way of providing a better level of service to your readers and to students. And it's also great way of growing your business.

Bryan Colins:
Now, the downsides of creating a course are it might not work. The first course that I created, I sent it to my list and it was crickets. Nobody bought it. And that was a bit heartbreaking, but I went back and reshot some of the course and repositioned it and retitled it. And then I improved it from there, but still it took me quite a bit of time. It took me several months to do all of that. So what I'm getting at is it can take time and you just got to be persistent. The other downsides to creating an online course is you're going to have to learn secondary skills just like blogging. Secondary skills that are indirectly related to writing. So perhaps you'll have to learn how to edit video. Perhaps you'd have to learn how to record audio. Perhaps you'd have to have to learn how to condense a chapter into a three or four minute lesson that people will actually consume.

Bryan Colins:
Or again, if you're not comfortable doing all of that, perhaps you'll have to invest a little bit in outsourcing, invest in a video editor or invest in a platform like Teachable. Or you can host your lesson materials and they'll take care of some of their customer service issues.

Bryan Colins:
So there you go. There are five great ways that you can earn money as a writer today. You can earn freelance writing and that's relatively quick to do. You can become a copywriter and specialize in an industry, and then charge premium prices to clients. You can write about what you're passionate about. Assuming that readers will buy it and create a book, and then you've got something lasting that'll help you call yourself an author. 

Bryan Colins:
You can set up your own blog and invest in the time it takes and also spend money on learning the skills you need to become a successful blogger. Or you can offer and sell courses based on your creative work today. And each of these five different ways will help you increase your income as a creative professional. And the good news is once you've got one working, and there's no reason why you can't do two or even three of these ways and grow your bottom line over time. And of course, every writer deserves to get paid. Just like the doctor who gets paid for helping a patient, you too should get paid for when you create something of value or something that entertains, informs or inspires your readers, your fans, or your audience.

Bryan Colins:
I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. If you did, please leave a rating on the iTunes store. And if you want to accomplish more with your writing, please visit becomeawritertoday.com/join and I'll send you a free email course. Thanks for listening.