If you are considering writing as a full-time career, making money with articles online can be quite lucrative for you if you have a strategy that works.
There are so many factors that you need to consider and work with to make sure you not only get to become a good online writer but also get compensated well for your skills.
This requires you to be well acquainted with how things work in this area, how to get well-prepped up for it, and ultimately, how to get started and get to succeed at it.
Well, lucky for you, I have simplified this whole process into 5 main steps that you should take to make everything work right.
Let’s take a deep look at the steps and how to take each of them.
Steps involved in online writing and making money
Step 1. Learn and master how to be writing articles online
First and foremost, before you get into making writing a money-making thing for you, you have to get good at it.
If you don’t know a thing about writing articles online, you need to take your time to learn about it and understand exactly how it works.
This is an essential step because this will help you know how to best deliver on content.
You need to know the writing basics like how to use creativity, put together sentences and paragraphs as well as getting attention from your clients.
As a professional writer, you should comprehend important writing areas such as how to research for ideas, how to have a convincing voice, the basics of grammar, how to put out your ideas without being intoxicating or unnecessarily wordy, plagiarism, making use of feedback, marketing yourself as well as the different writing styles.
Writing articles online for money is also known as freelance writing and here’s a really good beginner’s guide to freelance writing that you can use to learn how everything works.
Freelance writing comes in many forms and you should choose the type of writing you feel is your best fit.
Some of the types of online writing include:
* Blogging – Here you are mandated with coming up with content for blog sites. These sites will pay you per post or call you whenever they have opportunities, depending on how efficient you are.
* Newspapers/magazine writing – You basically write creative content for magazines and newspapers. Many websites are offering freelance work in this area, so you are assured that you will never miss work.
* Website content writing – This one entails creating content for webpages this could include a company’s ‘about’ page, content that puts the company out there.
* Business writing – If you choose this style, you will be writing press releases, reports, white papers, press releases pamphlets, and any other business-related content. Make sure you write good pieces for the prospective business because they will be instrumental in helping them continue to be competitive in the market.
* Curriculum writing – Here, you write educational content. This includes online courses, exam programs, textbooks, and any other educational content. You must have great command in the area you choose to write because you cannot deliver on something that you don’t know.
* SEO writing – With this one, you will be required to write for brands or product websites that are trying to get known so basically it’s more of advertising. You have to write good content that brings in traffic for these brands.
• Content/article writing – This is one of the most popular forms of freelance writing and all you do is write about things you love. You must research well on the topic you want to write about so that your work is informative.
Now, having that in mind, you can then identify any one of those types of writing that you are interested in.
Defining your writing career is very rewarding as a freelancer because, you get to know what articles you will be focusing on and the kind of clients that you want to work for, do the type of work that you enjoy, and ultimately, come up with an outstanding full-time job for yourself.
After making a decision on the type of writing that you will be doing, you should now invest your time in learning how each is done. Taking a short course is a great way to learn, as well as learning from experts in the area that you choose.
After you have learned the skills of your favorite writing category, you should then make an effort to do consistent practice so that you are able to master it completely.
You can do this by taking topics you love and writing comprehensive and valuable content on them as practice
Remember that practice makes perfect. Write a lot, and with so doing, you will eventually be an excellent writer. Sharing your work with trusted colleagues or friends is also a wise decision because they help you know what areas you need to keep working on.
Step 2. Look for writing jobs online
After mastering the writing skills, you can now go online and look for freelance websites that offer writing jobs. Here are a few of them that you can consider getting started with:
• Fiverr – This is a website that offers many online jobs including writing. It allows you to create your account and then from there you apply for writing projects. Once, you get one, you are required to work on it as per the guidelines and if your work is approved, you wait for payment clearance for two weeks before you can finally withdraw it.
• Strongwhispers – This is another freelance site that invites writers that can write on interesting, thought-provoking topics. They publish twice or thrice in a month so you are assured of an opportunity during that period and you get paid $50 for each article.
• Link-able – This is a website that helps writers earn money through publishing for different kinds of businesses and clients. They get to link you to potential clients and pay between $100 to $750 per project depending on the clients you can work for.
• Solid gigs – This one chooses the best freelance jobs and puts them together for you so that you decide which one best fits you. However, they accrue subscription fees for access to their services that is, $2 for 30 months for trial and later on $19 per month.
• The barefoot writer – This is a good writing website especially for beginners because it helps writers improve their writing skills and also pays them for submitting work on their site so long as it’s between 400-900 words. Their payment ranges from $100- $300.
You can choose one or two websites and look for jobs there as you aim to establish a good writing portfolio there so that you can get more clients wanting you to work for them.
However, note that, besides these sites, you can approach private companies and ask them for a writing project. You can then follow up on the application you made and then wait for a response. There are private companies who would love to hire you for the kind of writing you do in a specific niche.
Although it takes time and effort, it can be rewarding if you got even one company that hires you.
Don’t give up in the case that you still haven’t secured a project after a long period of constant application. Just keep applying and hoping for the best because, in that struggle, you might strike gold with just one website that agrees to hire you.
Step 3. Work on the jobs
This step follows after you have landed a few online writing jobs.
You should seek to give your best in each article for the sake of establishing a good name with the clients. That’s why even in the office, the best worker is susceptible to a promotion, awards as the employee of the year, and even just a favorite of the boss.
All I am saying is, make sure that your work earns you many future opportunities because, with this, your portfolio grows.
A good way to maintain a great relationship with the clients is by asking for feedback from them and also figuring out how you can improve certain sections of the work.
Doing this will show them that you are not only serious with what you are working on but also that you are willing to make their assignments as perfect as possible.
If you want to consequently get work, you have to ensure that you deliver well-researched work, and here is the catch, ahead of time!
Just make sure you are going beyond what the client expects just to wow them and make him or her offer you more work.
For you that is considering writing full time, please do not sit in your house and expect work to magically find you, no.
You have to bid for jobs daily and if targeting private companies as opposed to freelance websites, apply as much as possible, more than a part-time writer.
You can even decide to have a schedule for applying to jobs and working on the projects given to you so that, once you are done with one project, you apply for more to avoid being overwhelmed and not meeting deadlines.
Also, try to have moderate speed as you work on projects so that you are not spending too much on one and very little on the other. This will affect the quality of your work in one way or the other so, strike a good balance!
Editing your work well is also really important. You can try out writing apps if you can’t afford the services of an editor just to make sure that your work is fine-tuned.
Examples of such article editing apps include;
1. Hemingway – This is a free app that points out the present grammatical errors in your work and also seeks to ensure that your work is readable. All you have to do is copy and paste your work onto the app and then from there, the app will show you what needs revision. And then you will need to make the necessary corrections.
2. Grammarly – This also another app that will help you edit your work and what it does is give more information about any grammatical errors, clarity of your work, and many other errors and how you can improve them.
You get more options in editing your work once you use the premium version of the app but the basic version is also very helpful.
However, if you can afford the services of a professional editor, it would be nice because that cannot be compared to using these apps. Although these apps make a good alternative, getting your work edited by a professional editor is way better.
Step 4. Get paid
Once you finish working on your projects perfectly, you should then follow up on your payment seriously.
Depending on who you are working for, payment will greatly vary. Some freelance websites prefer to pay you once you are done with a project, daily, weekly, or even monthly.
Make sure the client you have worked for has paid once they approve your work.
Also, consider getting a business name for your writing account for all your payments so that you appear more professional to your clients.
If you are working for private entities, you want to make sure that you are not ripped off your hard work or delayed in terms of payment, as this happens a lot.
Make sure you come up with a good payment agreement with your clients. For example, as you get started with a client you have never worked with before, ask them to pay you after you are done with their project. And then with time, you can stretch that period to once a week or a month as you establish trust.
An important thing to remember is there are scammer clients who want free articles, and you want to avoid people like these.
To protect yourself from them, if asked to write a test sample, for the love of God don’t write 1500 words because chances are you will never hear from them and then, later on, see your work on their sites!
Just keep it short around 300-500 words because that’s enough to evaluate if you qualify for a project or not.
Step 5. Rinse and Repeat
Since you have now identified the kind of writing you want and started freelance jobs, all you need to do daily now is keep working on the jobs that you get and give back good quality work that can earn you future referrals as well as more opportunities.
It’s also worth applying for more opportunities to build your writing portfolio and keep improving your writing skills through learning from experts or mentors.
Learning from them is way easy because they have been there before and know what it’s like to work with demanding clients as well as the hustle of finding an opportunity and am sure they would be willing to help you.
Just keep connecting with people that can help you in your writing journey and don’t shy away from asking if you need help.
Lastly, take rejection positively. So many reasons could cause you to be rejected such as you not being a good fit for the job or maybe what you wrote just doesn’t cut it for them.
Either way, don’t give up. Keep sharpening your writing skills and grinding.
And that is it!
That is what you should do to make money online through articles.
Of course, you are bound to experience a few hiccups along the way but the important thing is to follow the above steps, keep going, and don’t give up.
I wish you well, and if you need assistance in any area mentioned above, feel free to ask and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
