Freelance Writing Isn’t the Only Way to Make Money Writing
Although I’ve trumpeted the benefits and joys of taking the freelance writing career route, I’ve also talked about many other ways writers (or writing types) can generate income… publishing online in particular. Maybe I’ve talked so much that you’ve gone deaf to my preaching. So, here, another one of your peers talking about trying a different route. — EES
Forget Freelance Writing Jobs, Build Financial Independence Writing for Yourself
Article by Lindsay Buroker
If you enjoy writing and you’re looking for a way to quit your day job or make money working from home, you’re probably looking into freelance writing. There are quite a few freelance writers out there in the blogosphere who will tell you all about how to get started finding jobs and how to manage your time and how to interface with clients and everything you can imagine related to the subject.
This article isn’t like that.
In fact, I don’t like the idea of freelance writing at all. People who do it end up quitting their day jobs and ditching their corporate bosses only to end up with another job and themselves for a boss. Half the time, they’re working longer hours, and they’ve lost all the benefits that came with working for “the man.” To boot, they still have to deal with making other people happy; it’s just that now those people are clients instead of bosses, but in the end those clients write the checks so there are a lot of similarities.
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So, what’s the alternative to freelance writing?
Why, writing for yourself of course.
Instead of working for an hourly wage or for pennies per word, use your words to create something you retain the rights to and that you’ll get paid for again and again.
All you have to do is look at a successful author, whether fiction or non-fiction, to see how a writer can make a fortune this way. Royalties come in year after year to pad the author’s pockets and create financial security.
Of course, writing a book is a serious project, and odds are dubious when you talk about getting it picked up by a major publishing house, and even if you do the chances of making it to the best sellers’ list and making a substantial income aren’t too high.
Fortunately, in this Internet age, you don’t have to sell a book to make money. You don’t even have to write a book (though you could, and if you self-publish you keep a lot more of the profits). You can simply create a blog or a website.
You don’t need any technical knowhow these days, and the startup costs are practically non-existent (you can even create a blog for free), but the potential rewards are great. Sure, it takes a little learning to figure out what topics are worth writing about (i.e., what topics are potentially profitable), and you’ll have to put some work into promoting your site, but if you were thinking of finding freelance writing jobs, you were going to have to learn how to promote yourself anyway.
Once you have a blog with some content and that is getting some visitors every day, you can monetize it with advertising or affiliate programs and start reaping the benefits: money that comes in every day whether you’re sitting at the computer or not.
It sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s not something where you can start raking in cash the very first week, but if you’re willing to work a little each day, you can eventually have a blog or website that earns you a significant amount of money each month. There are people with “Web empires” (numerous sites and blogs) that make a full-time income while only working a couple hours a day. And the great thing is that they are building something that can continue to earn them money into the future. Unlike with freelance writing, you can build financial independence without having to work your fingers off each day and without answering to demanding clients.
Writing for yourself and profiting from your own work is the ultimate freedom.
Lindsay Buroker practices what she preaches and has been making a living solely from her sites for more than three years. Find out more at her blog, Writing for Your Wealth.
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25 Ways to Write for Money. Open your eyes to a variety of ways to make money with your writing skills, many probably previously unknown to you!
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Another good article. I like to utilize all of the mentioned ways of making money online — freelancing, blogging, article writing for myself, self and formal publishing. This gives me income from many different sources as well as allowing me to not have all my ‘eggs in one basket’ (my number one rule for working online).
Heya Wordpreneur, thanks for picking up my article and sharing it with your readers!
~Lindsay
A year ago, it seemed like I was on my way to making income on writing for a few sites including Adsense on my own blog. Then, my commitment dropped slightly and my traffic dropped a lot it seemed. Then, I started posting again. But little to nothing. Then I changed the url of my one blog that was getting 20 to 30 visitors a day, it dropped to almost nothing and now it’s been 2 months and I can’t get the traffic back. These articles always make me think of a carrot on a stick.
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