How to Make Money Writing (really)

I've been making a nice living writing content for my websites and blogs for the last few years, and I run into quite a few people who are interested in doing the same!

If you have an interest in writing and an interest in working from home and making your own hours, but you're not quite sure how to get started, this article is for you.

Essentially, there are two ways to make money writing. You can either write for--and get paid by--someone else (i.e. freelancing, technical writing, etc.) or you can write for yourself, publish your own work, and keep all the cash (i.e. self-publishing a book or writing content for your own blog, website, etc.).

Both methods have their pros and cons.

Writing for Yourself

This is how I make my money, and I don't think I'd ever switch to freelancing, because I love that I control everything and don't have to answer to anyone.

The downside is that you're creating an asset from scratch, and it takes longer to start making money this way. You have to write the book before you can sell it. Or you have to build up a blog (put out regular content, work on getting links and visitors, etc.) before you can make money from it.

The upside is, as I mentioned, you have complete and utter control of your work. You retain all the rights and you can decide how to monetize your writing (for example, I make money from selling links on my sites, promoting affiliate programs, and running Google Adsense). Ultimately, you're creating assets that bring in money while you sleep, eat, take vacations, and all those things they talk about on late night "how to make money" infomercials.

While I've mentioned books, I believe it's more profitable to build up websites. A blog is a great way to get started, but you really have to learn about choosing a niche with profit potential, writing content that will attract visitors, and marketing your site. There's a lot more to it than just starting a blog.

I highly recommend the Yaro Starak Blog Mastermind program if you're interested in taking this route (click the link to read the review I wrote for it on my site). It's basically an online "how to blog for a living" school.

Writing for Other Folks

I'm less experienced in this area, but I know a lot of writers who got their start writing for others. Since it can take a while to generate income from a blog, it makes sense to begin here, especially if you need extra money to pay the bills right today.

The upside to writing for others is that you get paid an agreed upon fee as soon as, or shortly after, the work is complete. In most cases, you don't have to write a whole book or build up a whole site to make money. You might just write an article or series of articles for a person or company.

The downside is that there's a lot of competition and writing is something that can be--and is--outsourced to countries where people are willing to do a lot of work for a very small amount of money. Also, you may find it hard to get jobs until you've gotten jobs before (yup, a Catch-22) and built up a portfolio.

One way you can get started is by writing for sites such as Associated Content. They don't care about your past writing credentials, just that you can rub words together and make worthwhile sentences. The pay isn't great (okay, the pay is less than mediocre), but thanks to bonuses for page views, it's possible to create residual income from your work, which means your popular articles can end up being worth quite a bit more. Another site, eHow, only pays based on page views, but it's possible to make hundreds of dollars a month.

You can also try bidding on projects on Rentacoder or Elance. You can use your Associated Content/Ehow articles as examples of your work, a portfolio of sorts, to try and win bids.

Eventually you'll feel confident enough to try freelancing for magazines or applying for paid blogging jobs (where you write the content for someone else's blog).

Conclusion

Either of these methods, writing for others or writing for yourself, can earn you a stay-at-home income, maybe even one that meets or exceeds what you make in your current job. If you're just getting started, I'd recommend pursuing both avenues.

Start making money today by freelancing or writing for article sites, but also work on building up your own assets that you control 100% (and that can pay you again and again). Remember to check out my review for that blog school, as that's a great way to get started building up a profitable blog!

Good luck!