Earning a living writing content is not a bad way to make money.

Let me start off by saying what I think about this as a business opportunity or idea for you to start doing to make some extra cash.

I think that this seems like a very easy way to make money and on the surface, it is exactly that, but it comes with a discipline that most people do not have.

Introduction comments here

Do I think this is a good way to make money? Yes – is my answer.

Do I think it has issues with this method? Yes – definitely see more below.

And then before I go on I do need to tell you this detail. I have been teaching people how to make money online for about 10 years now, and because I have this wealth of experience, I need to tell you that a post like this is written straight out of my head. I say this just to let you know that I might be leaving out a few choice nuggets of information that if you were planning to do this for a living, then you might want to email me and set up a meeting so I can discuss it in more detail with you. The chat will be free, and will also depend on how busy I am at the time (IE can I fit in a one hour chat or not?)

Just out of curiosity – I write reports, I write content for clients and more all the time, I have courses that I sell that I have written, and I am helpless and hopeless at spelling and grammar. In the paragraph above this, I counted 9 errors that I did when typing it out. BUT, I use Grammarly and a few other things that I feel are good enough for my needs. You will need to test this to see how confident you are with your own writing skills.

Can anyone make money this way?

The answer to this title is  – almost anyone.

What you will need is this…

The ability to write in English.

A computer

An Internet connection.

How well does your command of the English language need to be?

If you are just a normal person with normal writing skills, you might never get to the level where you can command thousands of Rands for each article, but let me show you a short list here below.

Bad writing skills.

You will probably only earn anywhere from R20.00 up to about R 80.00 per article of 500 words. This might be OK if you can type fast because then you could (perhaps) write an article in 15 to 30 minutes. Therefore your potential monthly income should be more or less like this.

1 hours a day canvassing for work and emailing existing clients and old clients. (PS a bad writer will always have to canvass for new clients but a great writer will get the referral and repeat business a lot – so this will fall away if you write well)

2 hours a day researching the subjects that you have to write about. (This is another thing that could fall away if you tend to get writing jobs on the same subject or the same niche all the time)

3 hours a day writing. (This is also something that you could double up on, but I have found that it is very hard to write for longer than this)

This is based on working only on weekdays.

INCOME ESTIMATE

from as low as R 2400.00 a month.

I want to say that you would have to be very bad at writing to earn this little.

to as much as R 14 000 a month.

Medium (Normal) writing skills.

This is what most people should expect to do and to earn.

You canvass for clients a lot in the first few months, but after awhile you will have built up a core list of clients that will need your services all the time.

As you type more and more, so will your typing skills get better and better and there will be a point where you could easily type out a 500-word article in 15 minutes.

Now, if you are sticking to a niche – Like weight loss, or travel, or making money online, or bitcoin then you will get to know your products well and will probably only ever need an hour a day for keeping up to date with the subject.

Therefore after 3 months if you are working an hour a day researching and then four hours writing you will probably be getting an average of R 180 00 to R 250 00 per article.

This means that you could be doing as many as 16 articles a day.

That is R 3200 00 PER DAY!

Now, personally, I call bullshit on that number, because of a whole lot of factors.

The first one is that I have found that it is impossible for me to write so much all the time. I mean, look at this page – there are enough words, right? But could I do this 4 times in a row today – OK, maybe, BUT I know that I would not keep it up for more than three days in a row.

The second bullshit fact is this – when you start to earn R 20 000 a month writing for only 3 days a week, are you really going to work for 6 days a week to double your income? I doubt it. I think that most people will stop for lunch and never come back to their computer.

Top writing skills

There are VERY few people who can say that they fit into this level of writing, but those that do will be in very high demand, they will find that they have to turn away business and could command extremely high hourly rates.

Copywriting as opposed to content writing is a very different animal. Copywriters earn very well – if they are good at what they do.

A decent content writer learns how to add MORE words to an article and still make it interesting to read (I hope you are still enjoying my efforts here).

A decent copywriter learns how to say something in fewer words and still make it so enticing that people naturally click on stuff that they are told to click on.

I wish I was that good. I know I am not. Could I be? Probably, if I really took the time to learn how to do it right.

I have many courses on copywriting and most are very good at teaching those skills. I am far too disinterested in making that effort to try.

So – How do you get started?

There are a number of ways…

Firstly I want to tell you that you do NOT need to pay to start this. Most places will be free for you to join and to start writing for them.

There are quite a few websites that pay you to write for them. They start you off with crappy pay and as you gain a reputation, so your pay levels climb. Some of these sites will rob you occasionally (Clients will book you take your articles and not pay you) But in general, if you keep at it you will get to a level where you will be earning a living.

Then you could join Facebook groups for guest posting and content writers. This is OK too, as you will probably find a lot of work there. You will run the same risk of finding crooks, but generally, you will be just fine.

Another way to get work is to join the internet marketing groups and the SEO groups on Facebook. Those sites often have posts where the big agencies post asking for writers. Once you get in with those guys you will probably be busy forever as long as you keep up a high standard of service. Never piss them off.

You could canvass those agencies too. Either by searching for them on Google or by seeing who is active in the groups and sending them private messages. Please do not spam them.

But for me, I think the best way to earn a living writing content is this way…

Research a popular niche that you enjoy and know that there is likely to be a big demand for content.

Examples of this are weight loss, yoga, exercising of any sort, e-commerce, fashion, travel, sport and many more.

Write out a set of 10 great articles of between five hundred and a thousand words each. Then Google the biggest blogs in that niche and send them an introduction email. Follow up at least 5 times for each blog owner.

Tell them that they are welcome to look at your examples, BUT CANNOT publish them. Once you are communicating with them, then you offer then a special startup price for the first 10 articles. OR, let them tell you what they are prepared to pay. Sometimes they are willing to pay twice as much as what you would have asked for. I regularly see webmasters offering R 500 00 per 500 words article.

This method is going to keep you very busy for the first 6 months because it will probably take you that long before you have a nest of 20 websites that continually order articles from you.

But when you get to that level, you are going to be very busy and pretty well paid.

The BAD part of content writing for a living?

OK, for me this is very simple and very obvious.

You have to keep up a very high standard ALL the time. Clients are very fussy when they are paying you – and for good reason. As soon as you start to copy and paste older articles into new ones and get caught – you will be out of business. Good grammar, good spelling, open sentences, interesting content etc are all vital to keeping clients happy forever.

You will be writing all day. (or it will seem like it) so, know this before you launch yourself into this as a business. It would send me to the loony bin in a week or so, but maybe you have the temperament to do this. I am also the kind of person who cannot have a day job because I fail to see why I should work every day – all day.

Your holidays are going to be horribly expensive. This is not a joke. Holidays are pretty expensive anyway, but yours come with a LOSS of income. IE when you are sitting on the beach at the end of a lovely day off, you can look back and work out how much money you lost because you were not writing but sitting on your bum in the sand.

Final notes.

If you are serious about this then you are welcome to contact me via the contact page for a discussion on how to get going properly. For example, I highly suggest that you set up your own website for this, so people can go and see stuff that you have to say, see referrals, see examples, see everything that will leave them feeling safe when they want to place an order with you.

I can show you how to set up that website in the perfect way. I can show you a free way to do this (free from me – you will still need to buy a domain and get hosting) and I can show you how to pay me a lot of money to build a perfect lead generating content writing website for you.

I can also show you how you can use this writing gig to get a fast income, and then build up a residual income business at the same time, so that after about 6 months or very hard work on your part, you will have 2 full-time income streams.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share it if you feel that I have given good tips.

go see – Content creation tutorials

writing content for a living online