Tips to Make Money Online as a Writer

July 18, 2007

Do you want to make money online as a writer? Non fiction writing can be an extremely lucrative business, if you work hard at it, and online writing is the easiest way for a beginning writer to get a break.  Althought the money may not be great, in comparison to writing for offline publications, online writing can open the door to many more lucrative opportunities. Just be sure to follow these tips to avoid the mistakes that potential online writers make.Â

Do provide clips of previous work, or work samples. I have received elance bids from people with no samples of their writing at all. That tells me that they have probably never written anything worth putting on my website.

Make sure your writing samples are free of typos and gramatically errors. It’s easy to run the spelling and grammar check on Microsoft Word, but you would be surprised at the number of samples I have received that are riddled with errors. If you struggle with grammar read the writer’s bible.

Do expect to do your own research.  I recently received an elance bid, which said that the writer was able to do bid a lower amount of money because I would be doing the research for them. Research can often be the most time consuming aspect of online content writing, and if I was going to do the research for the writer, I might as well write the content myself.

Sign up with Elance to bid on writing jobs. Also, send queries to sites you would like to write for and join Writers Market to find new opportunities. Don’t just dash off a quick email - or worse still, send a mass email to various webmasters. Plan your query carefully, and make it compelling enough that your chosen webmaster will want to read more of your work.

Don’t use duplicate content. Whatever you do, if you use a website to showcase samples of your work, don’t include content that you’ve written for other people’s sites. If you do this, both your site, and the site in question could be penalised for duplicate content. Instead, use unpublished samples of your work and provide links to pieces you’ve written on other sites.

Consider writing your first few articles free of charge. This will not only give you experience, it will also enable you to build up a portfolio of clips to show potential webmasters. Many writers argue that you should never work for free, and I don’t agree with them. Good writing takes a long time to learn, and professional writers write every day anyway, so doing a few free jobs will help you build up a decent portfolio and give you plenty of writing practise at the same time.

Don’t churn out poor quality work. Generally, you will not make as much money writing online content as you would writing for offline publications, but it is a great way to get your foot in the door. Most webmasters won’t be as fussy as magazine editors, so you have a greater chance of having your work accepted. However, this is not an excuse to submit shoddy work. Your articles could be searchable online forever, and if you have poor work in circulation this could hinder your chances of writing for the more lucrative print publications in the future.

Choose a niche and try to get as much experience writing in that niche as you can, before branching out into other writing topics. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it will save you time on research, as you will be able to use the same research materials and sources for many articles. Secondly it will help establish you as an expert in your field, ensuring that you not get more lucrative writing work in the future, and you chances of having a book published at a later date will be much greater.

Make sure you take time to learn your craft. Consider taking a writing course, and read several of the excellent books available on Freelance Writing, including these ones:
Six Figure Freelancing
Damn! Why Didn’t I Write That
Writers Digest Guide to Making Money Freelance Writing

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Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Ideas 

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