10 Ways To Make Cool Money As A Writer

• The below are ten ways to make cool money as a writer.

THE NATION REPORTERS reports that you might be an exceptional writer and not realize that there are loads of opportunities to monetize your talent. In fact, there are much more ways to monetize writing than most articles cover. In this post, we’ll consider ten of them.

The goal is to show how you can stop being a spectator and create supplemental income or even full-time income through your writing as many have done. If you’re a student or budding writer, you should explore these ideas.

1. Guest Post on High-Paying Publications and Magazines

Do you know publications, companies, and magazines need writers to keep the content pipeline filled? These publications and companies are willing to share a small percentage of profits with freelancers who provide helpful content to their audience.

This article by Writersincharge presents 45 such websites (some of these websites pay up to $500 per post).

So, how do you make money writing guest posts for publications?

Use any of these two approaches: either select niche blogs that pay writers to guest post or go to niche websites that don’t pay for guest posts. In both cases, you build credibility. But a guest post on an authoritative website carries more weight.

Nonetheless, editors at authoritative websites will ignore your pitch if you haven’t been published anywhere before. So, it’s something of a learning curve.

Once you land two guest posts in authoritative, industry-specific publications, you’ll have built enough social proof to pitch companies or organizations looking for writers who can write content tailored to that industry.

2. Become a Copywriter

It’s a no brainer: people will pay you to write their sales descriptions, sales copy, and emails. This is ideal if you had some sort of knowledge on how to persuade people through the written word.

It’s a bit more nuanced than it sounds. Copywriting skill can take years to develop. And like any other writing skill, you have to keep nurturing it through practice and learning.

You can write emails, landing pages, websites, video scripts, product descriptions, crowdfunding campaigns, and more. Copywriting usually involves identifying a pain or problem. describing the problem in a way your audience relates with, and then providing a solution. So, if you’re a creative writer, you can make a living with copywriting.

Jodie Cordell, who is both a real estate agent and a real estate copywriter says, “I understand the pain my clients feel as I interact with them. Therefore it’s easy to try to address those needs in my writing.”

Note that, one of the banalities of making money through writing is pitching clients. And copywriters aren’t exempt from getting a slew of rejections. But when you land a good copywriting gig, the pay is usually well worth it.

3. Do Freelance Content

Writing for Businesses
Content writing is probably the most popular freelance occupation. It’s similar to guest posting in that you provide content or marketing collateral for businesses who need to meet a particular goal: traffic, leads, brand awareness, etc.

Content types usually needed by companies include articles, blog posts, guest posts, white papers, case studies, e-books, proposals, FAQs, and more.

You’ll need to choose a niche, build a solid portfolio of work, and pitch lots of businesses.

For starters, you’re sure to maintain a reasonable side income with freelance content writing, but experienced content writers earn up to $500+ per project.

Breaking into some freelance writing niches is tough, so you have to spend enough time with your initial research.

It’s also important that you hold down a full-time job while starting out as a freelance writer. It’s usually feast or famine if you’re a new freelance writer.

An estimated half of the freelance writers in the United States need to hold down a full-time job. Known as “Moonlighters” by the media and “Diversified Workers” by economists, these writers manage to cross between both worlds with ease.

To avoid drought periods, you need to consistently pitch lots of businesses, understand SEO and work on building a brand.

4. Ghostwrite Stories

Can you write short stories, books, speeches, journals, or literary pieces? If you’re okay with giving off the rights to your work to someone else, then you can make money through ghost writing.

Of course, this means you should charge more as a ghost writer since you won’t be getting a byline.

Ghost writing clients could be industry influencers, successful small business owners, or newbie authors who need help telling their story or writing a book.

How do you become a ghostwriter?

Ghost writing itself is an aspect of freelance content writing so the process described above for content writing works. You’ll need to find a niche, build a body of work and pitch potential clients.

By body of work, you should have a portfolio that reflects your service offering. For example, if you want to make money writing short stories, you should probably have some published short stories in your name.

5. Get Paid to Write on Medium

You can make money writing about your life, and get paid when people read your content via Medium’s partner program.

However, don’t count on making a full-time income on Medium–you can make side income at best. Only 9% of Medium’s writers make more than $100 a month. But some top writers make $5,000 – $10,000 per month.

One of the advantages of writing on Medium is that it’s easy to start. But your article has to be interesting enough to draw the attention of large numbers of people and also keep them reading to the end.

If you’re just learning how to write content, writing on Medium is a smart way to keep track of your growth.

6. Self-Publish on Kindle

Self-publishing a book on Amazon is a way to earn passive income. But it sounds easier than it looks. You’ll receive a 35% royalty for Kindle books priced from $0.99 to $2.98 and the same percentage for books priced above $9.99.

For Kindle books priced from $2.99 to $9.99, you receive a 70% royalty on each sale. So, you want to price your book between $2.99-$9.99

You’ll be competing with a lot of other authors in your genre. So, you have to think about building your own audience and marketing your book to them.

You should probably have built an audience via blogging, email marketing, and/or Youtube content creation before thinking about self-publishing a book.

7. Blog and Make Money through Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing and blogging are usually advertised as a fast way to make money online. The truth is that it takes a lot of patience to make money through these routes since you’d have to build your own audience from scratch in many cases.

All the same, building a blog and monetizing it through affiliate marketing or digital products is a very lucrative way to make money as a writer.

First you need to pick a niche you want to write in. Then write a good deal of content around some well-searched keywords in that niche. You can also guest post on other websites in your niche to build up your website SEO.

Once your site starts getting consistent, considerable traffic, you can add review and comparison posts into the mix with your specific affiliate tracking links to make passive income whenever anyone clicks on your links.

8. Find Paid Writing Internships

As a student, the best way to break into writing as a career is via a paid internship. You might get the opportunity to work on a cool marketing project and build up your portfolio as you go.

Companies generally seek out interns to manage their social media and ad copies. The best part is that some of these internships now allow remote work. Paid interns earn an average of $17.37/hr. But how do you find these paid internships?

You should have a portfolio of one or two writings to show employers at the company you want to intern for. Getting paid writing internships is as simple as making a google search for paid writing internship “your location.”

9. Become a Technical Writer

Can you take on these types of writing projects: instruction manuals, installation documentations, reports, white papers, startup pitch decks and case studies? Then. you can make a killing as a technical writer.

Right now, in the U.S., you can easily make up to $70,000 a year as a technical writer. As of 2020, the median salary for a technical writer in the US is $74,650. And interestingly, 56.4% of technical writers say their job is “low-stress.”

So, how do you break into technical writing?

First, you need to think beyond the money. Understand that technical writing involves translating complex ideas and documents into plain language. You have to understand and use terminology that’s specific to the project you’re working on efficiently.

In short, you need to take a course in technical writing instead of winging it. You should go for a technical writing certification course if you have the time.

Once you’ve built a solid portfolio, you can apply directly to technical writing jobs via job posting platforms like Indeed and Google Careers.

10. Make Money Writing Social Media Content

Companies and publications need people to manage their social media. Social media tasks can range from writing posts and tweets to running full ad campaigns. If you’re a student, this might be something to try your hands on via freelance platforms like Upwork.

If you’re someone with a lot of social media marketing experience, you can also become a social media strategist or consultant. They help companies manage their social media team and social media content strategies.