I’ve found financial freedom making money writing online, but there’s no one path. Learn how to make money writing online through these jobs and resources.
Maybe I am a little biased when I say that writing is a great way to make extra money online. I’ve spent five years as a freelance writer and another five years before that writing reports as a stock market analyst. Making money writing online could be one of the best ways to make extra cash because it costs nothing to start, and you can learn as you go.
We’ll get into the process I used to make money writing online but don’t force yourself into writing if it’s not something you enjoy doing. There are plenty of ways to make money working from home. It takes time and a lot of effort to make money, so you’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing. Check out some of these other posts for different ways to make money online or visit our How to Make Money Directory of jobs.
How to Make Money Freelancing and 9 Websites to do it
How to Start a Blog and Make Money Every Month
How to Publish a Book and Make Money on Amazon
How to Make Money Writing Online
Making money writing online can come from various jobs, from idea research to drafting and editing. I was always a relatively quick writer and liked putting my thoughts down on paper, so I always preferred doing the writing instead of editing jobs. I know a lot of bloggers that split their time up pretty evenly between writing jobs and editing/proofreading gigs. As we discussed in the freelancing post, making money is usually a combination of finding employment in which you have a vital skill set or in things people don’t want to do.
Some ways to make money writing online will take longer to get going than others. Making money with your writing on a blog will take longer to build traffic and advertising revenue but has its advantages in your credit and upside potential in owning your own site. Getting separate freelance writing gigs might be a little faster, but you could constantly be spending time looking for more work.
I’m going to lead with the most complicated way to make money writing online and build to the easier and quicker routes, so stick around for the whole list.
Blogging is the go-to choice for many people looking to make money online but is probably one of the most challenging and disappointing ways to make it. This is coming from first-hand experience and years of working with other bloggers. The sad fact is that most blogs make absolutely no money or fail to meet expectations. It’s the main reason that most bloggers give it up before even six months.
While it’s challenging work, blogging does have its advantages. You have complete control of the material you post and can do so with the click of a mouse. You don’t have to watch your story go cold while it sits on an editor’s desk or see half of it get censored. A blog can be a great source of recurring income if you can stick with it for a little while without making much. That’s because the search ranking and community you build up over time will help drive people to your blog even when you are not writing.
I’ve managed my blogs for just over a year now and am starting to make money from my writing. I posted my first income report in January, sharing how I made over $2,000 for the month from two of my blogs.
There are quite a few ways to make money off your blog, but the three principal forms are advertising, affiliate marketing, and products or services.
Advertising through Google Adwords or another account is probably one of the most popular ways to make money writing online, and it’s straightforward to set up. You position boxes in different areas of your blog to show advertisements and get paid every time someone clicks on the ad. You will need a good amount of traffic to make any real money this way. Depending on your audience, you will probably only get about one dollar for each click. Only a tiny fraction of your visitors will click on an ad, maybe around a percent or so. Using these assumptions, you can estimate how much traffic you will need to make money.
Example: You get 5,000 visitors a month and about 10,000 pageviews. You might get around 100 clicks (10,000 * 1%) for those page views and make around $100 for the month.
Getting to 10,000 pageviews will take up to a year for most blogs. After about 14 months of blogging, I get just over 28,000 pageviews from my five blogs, but three are very new and haven’t built much traffic yet. Now consider that I post between two and three times a week, and it takes several hours to put together each post. That translates to a part-time job weekly with very little return from the advertising. There are some points of the year that pay off very well for blog advertising, especially during Black Friday and the holiday shopping season.
Affiliate marketing is another form of advertising for making money online but with a direct contract between the blogger and the advertising company. Instead of getting paid when someone clicks on an ad, the blogger usually gets paid when someone clicks on an ad and then pays for a service or product on the advertiser’s page. If your affiliate ads are closely related to what your blog visitors need, then you might make more money with affiliates than with general advertising, but it’s still a slow way to do money writing.
If only a percent or two of your visitors click through an affiliate ad, and then only a tiny percentage sign up for the service or product, you will be lucky to get a few payments from affiliates each month. The upside is that affiliate ads pay much more, between $50 and a couple of hundred, for each person that completes the required action.
One of the better ways to make money writing on your blog is by selling your products or services. Presumably, by writing to a blog about a specific topic, you are an expert in the field and might be able to sell premium consulting. I sell all my books through websites and make just over $1,200 a month from self-publishing.
Writing for other bloggers is an easier way to make money online. Once a blog’s traffic gets going, bloggers start making perfect money and may start thinking about outsourcing some of the writing. Join a few blogging groups on Facebook and get to know some group members. Not only will you pick up ideas on doing money writing, but you’ll also make some connections with people looking to hire out their writing. I’ve seen writers charge as much as $500 for an article, though most start around $100 or slightly higher. You’ll need to be able to show examples of your work, so put together a few models before you start approaching other bloggers.
Finding Jobs and Resources to Make Money Writing Online
One of the best ways to make money writing online is by using your blog as a way to get freelance writing jobs. Look on the website of nearly every blogger, and you’ll find a page or offer to hire them for writing. It kind of sucks that you have to do months or more of writing for free just to get paid to write, but employers want to see that you can deliver on their content needs. The upside is that if you keep your blog updated regularly, you’ll also start to make money there.
Paid writing jobs are available on freelancing sites like freelancer.com, but you will spend a ton of time filling out applications. Many of these projects never get assigned, and many more go to the lowest bid. The sites are pretty easy to use, and if you build up a strong profile of experience, you might get some projects from people willing to pay a little more for quality.
I’ve found the most success on websites targeting freelance writing, especially the ProBlogger job board. You’ll still see some of the same problems here with competition from low-budget providers, but the quality of jobs is much better.
Many people have started working through Fiverr.com
to make money writing online and for other freelance projects. Instead of someone posting a specific task they need to be completed, as, with most freelancer sites, you list a generic task you can complete for someone. The introductory price for jobs starts at $5, but you can add extra features to make more money. I haven’t offered any services on Fiverr but use it regularly to find people for small projects.
A great resource to help build your skills and make more money writing online is through courses on Udemy
. The education platform hosts videos people sell and regularly offers enormous discounts on courses. If you’re not sure your skills are yet up to a professional level, then there’s probably a course on Udemy that can help. It’s also a great resource to sell your courses.
Even the best grammaticists among us need a little proofreading help on our writing. While the spellcheck on Microsoft Word works pretty well, I use Grammarly
to catch a range of grammar and wording problems. The site offers a plagiarism checker to ensure content hasn’t been copied and will catch much more than other software programs. You paste or link your document into the checker, and Grammarly will do the rest. I hire someone to edit longer work like my ebooks, but Grammarly saves me a lot of money by using the software to check smaller writing tasks.
Making money writing online will take time, just like any job. You may be able to find some projects quickly, but it’s only after you’ve built up your skill set and a reputation that you’ll be able to charge more money. It’s still a relatively easy way to make extra money, though, because it doesn’t cost anything to start, and the pay can be very high compared to other freelancing jobs.