Create Your Own Business Online and Start Making Money as a Writer

Are you a skilled writer? Would you like to put your skills to good use as part of a brand new online business? Whether you’ve already worked professionally as a writer or you’re just getting started with mere passion to guide you, the following is an example of a person who wishes to start making money as a writer right now instead of later. Use this as a guide to start your own online business or use it as inspiration to come up with your own ideas for making money using your thoughts, ideas and plain old hard work.

It Takes Hard Work to Start a Writing Business

Making money as a writer isn’t easy, especially when you’re first starting out. This is one thing that should be made absolutely clear before you open an online business. While overhead can be low and while you can start making money as a writer from day one, should be prepared for good days, bad days, awesome days and horrendous days that make you want to throw your hands up and quit.

Then again, the above can be said about any business, really. As long as you are ready to work hard, as long you have the intestinal fortitude to command high rates for your work and as long you are able to multi-task as you write for clients and manage your online business at the same time, please proceed and dream big. You’re closer to making money as a writer than you think.

The Steps for making Money as a Writer

Instead of coming up with a fictional writer to illustrate the ease of making money as a writer online, pretend the following person is you. Whether you are or aren’t at the moment, imagine that you are super-ambitious and that you suddenly woke up this morning with a fire in your belly to open up your very own online business. Here is one way you could go about it.

Your first step is to put your name out there. Get on ELance and Odesk, as well as Freelancer; or any other site that you can think of to advertise your services. Get on social media and start blasting out your skills, asking if anyone needs the services of a writer. Offer your services at low rates at first just to get your foot in the door. Once you prove your value, you can then charge higher rates as you see fit (as long as your clients agree to pay them).

You can also scour the Internet for websites, social media accounts and ads for companies who might be able to use your services. Marketing companies always need the services of a reliable writer. Contact several marketing companies and pitch your services professionally and in such a way that it’s impossible for those companies you’re approaching to say no.

By now you should have at least one project to help you start making money as a writer. If you have presented yourself well, you should now have several clients who keep you quite busy. If you become too busy with the above online business model, you can always put out ads for writers that you can manage. In this sense, you will become a writing agency, and you can charge even higher fees (as long as the quality is good) because you’ll be able to reliably churn out double or triple the content for all of your clients.

Affiliate Marketing

If you want an additional income stream with your online business, you can turn to ClickBank, CommissionJunction and other affiliate networks to offer other people’s products and services for cut of the purchase price.

Making money as a writer through affiliate marketing is easy once you get past the technical stuff. You will oftentimes need your own website, a blog, reports and regularly-delivered email messages, but you can use an inexpensive service like Fiverr to find someone to complete those tasks (the technical stuff) or you can turn to Elance and Odesk if you want a bit higher-quality service.

With affiliate marketing, you will set up a site, entice subscribers to an email list, drive traffic to that list through pay-per-click advertising (on a platform like Google’s Adwords) and you can then pitch affiliate products to your list, thus making money.

Writing Books

Instead of merely selling affiliate products, you can write books that you can then publish for free on Kindle, Create Space, Vervante and other publishers. At the very least, you should have an email list so that you can keep your subscribers up-to-date with your latest activities and offerings, such as your newest book to be released.

There you have it. It sounds simple, and it really is, as long as you can get past the website creation, email marketing setup and all that other technical know-how. Again, hire freelancers who are skilled in those things to take them off your hands.

Then, start offering your services. Send out query letters to marketing and other companies. Pitch your favorite news source to become a journalist, write a book on something you know a ton about – or research something and write a book about a new subject you’re dying to learn about.

There are infinite ways to go about making money as a writer. Choose one or, for best results, choose them all to develop several income streams that never quit. If writing is your passion, your new online business awaits.

Image Source: Elvert Barnes on Flickr