How to Make Money Writing: 5 Tips To Increase Your Income

Did you know that experienced freelance writers can make upwards of $60 per hour? If you’d like to be one of those writers someday, you have to start somewhere, right? Right!

With that being said, figuring out how to make money by writing on the internet can be a challenge, but fortunately, you’ve come to the right place.

In this blog post, we will talk about some of these ways so you can implement them and start making money off your every word.

Start a Blog

One of the best ways to make money writing is to start your own blog. Having a blog actually serves a number of purposes apart from earning money.

One such way is it provides you a training ground for you to hone your writing skills with constant practice.

Another benefit of having a blog is it provides you a way to reach clients because it also serves as a lead generation tool.

A blog also allows you to build your credibility in the niche you’ve chosen as well as make money through blog monetization strategies.

How to Get Started

Choose the Right Niche

Before starting a blog, it’s important to choose the right niche or market to write about. Pick a niche that you’re interested in or something you’re passionate about because you can write better when you love what you’re writing about.

Equally important is to choose a niche that has enough audience interest. It’s pointless to write about something you love if no one’s going to read it anyway.

Some of the best niches to write about are food, fashion, lifestyle, personal finance, self-development, and the “make money online” niche among others.

Pick a Blog Platform

The next step is to find a site that will host your blog, otherwise known as blogging platforms.

The good news is there are so many good options to choose from when it comes to finding a platform. It all goes down to whether you want a hosted or self-hosted blogging solution.

Hosted blogs such as WordPress.com and Blogger.com are usually free though they come with several limitations. The most notable of which is that your blog name will be set as a subdomain.

If your blog name is “myblog” for instance, its domain name will become either myblog.wordpress.com or myblog.blogger.com.

Self-hosted blogs, on the other hand, are paid services though unlike hosted blogs, they allow you more freedom in terms of managing and maintaining your blog. You also get your own domain name so taking off from the same example, “myblog” will become myblog.com.

WordPress.org for instance offers hundreds of plugins that will help you enhance your blog in very simple steps.

Choose a Domain Name

Picking the right domain name is a good way to begin your blogging journey especially since this is how your blog will be known online.

That being said, it’s important to choose a domain name that people will easily recall. One that they can easily type on their address bars or use to search in Google.

While there’s no specific rule when it comes to choosing a domain name, picking something catchy and memorable is the best way to go.

How to Market a Blog

Having a blog is not going to be enough if you want to become a successful writer and make money from writing. The “build it and they will come” motto doesn’t work in real life.

For these things to happen, you need to have a wider reach. You need to have a larger audience who will consume every blog post you write.

This is why marketing a blog is equally important especially in the online world where the competition is as stiff as it gets.

So how do you do this?

The best way is to leverage the power of social media. Promote your blog posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter every time you publish one.

Social media platforms love sharing posts that bring great value to their users, which gives your blog a better chance of getting seen by more people.

Social bookmarking sites like AllTop, StumbleUpon, and Digg are also good alternatives when looking for a place to share your blog posts.

If you have a newsletter, you can also use it to promote the blog to your email list.

Use a Freelance Marketplace

Finding clients is one of the biggest challenges. The good news is that a freelance marketplace like FreeUp can help you land clients and gigs on a rather consistent basis. All you have to do is sign up to start getting access to writing opportunities.

It would be best to build a writing portfolio beforehand to help increase your stock and credibility. With a portfolio in place, you’ll be in a better position to impress potential clients and eventually land more gigs.

Using a freelance marketplace is ideal for new writers not just because of their client base but also for the in-house support one can get when the need arises.

Write for Magazines and Other Blogs

You’ve probably heard the saying that “content is king” and that couldn’t be any more true, especially today when companies strive to produce content consistently.

Why?

Because this is how they survive. They need regular content to keep their audiences engaged, which is why these publications are always on the lookout for writers who can contribute an article or two when they need it.

Guest blogging has been a tried and tested solution for writers especially those who maintain their own blogs.

While most guest blogging gigs are free, they do have the potential to lead to paid work. The point of guest blogging is to make build relationships with other blogs and effectively introduce yourself to the other blog’s established audience.

If a reader of that other blog likes your writing style, there’s always that chance of getting hired directly.

Writing for magazines is a bit different because unlike blogs, getting to write for printed media requires experience and reputation. Once you’ve garnered enough credibility though, you can expect a more lucrative pay writing for magazines.

Self-Publish an Ebook

Another way writers earn money is by selling ebooks.

Time and again, we’ve heard stories about struggling writers who became millionaires by publishing their books on the Kindle platform.

What’s great about self-publishing is unlike traditional publishing, your manuscript doesn’t need to go through a publisher’s approval.

This is huge considering how some of the most prolific writers of our time got rejected multiple times before they got their first book published and eventually achieving the recognition they now enjoy.

Just like what we mentioned earlier about blogs, finding success as a self-published author relies heavily on your target audience. Get this right and you’ll sell ebooks like pancakes.

This route requires patience as well because there’s a chance that your first book may not meet the commercial success you’re expecting it to. It may even take several books before that happens.

What’s good is that you have a good fighting chance right off the bat with Amazon’s huge following. The rest is up to you.

Conclusion

Writing can be a lucrative career if you play your cards right and the tips provided are just some of the ways you can make money writing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will be easy though. Like any other big endeavor, it requires investment in terms of time, knowledge, and experience.

If you’d like to get more tips to earn money with your writing, check out our blog post on doubling your income as a copywriter.