Everyone in my “real life”doesn’t know what I do for a living. It’s not that I’m secretive,it’s just that people assume a homeschooling mom of six is plenty busy enough,right? In fact,about 6 months into this business,when I was working several hours a day to build up my body of work,a friend of ours was trying to convince me that I wanted to buy his laptop and he said “Come on,ask your husband to buy it for you.”I was livid. But I understand.
When people find out,I usually have a lot of explaining to do. Sometimes they shrug it off,I have a habit of making it sound complicated (it’s easy,just use big words until their eyes glaze over- try explaining SEO) but a lot of times I’ll get an email from them later on,asking me for more details. So far,I’ve only convinced one of my real life friends to embark on this journey,but that’s not surprising. Over the years,she and I have talked each other in to selling Pre-paid Legal Services,Usborne Books,there was some talk of Mary Kay but I resisted,and now we’re writing together. It’s part of the relationship. We sell Amazon books together,too. She’s my colleague in everything.
I also get referrals. “Suzy said you were a writer,how do I get started?”
Today I was typing up my standard response and figured I’d share some of the finer points here. That way,I can just send them a link next time. It’s not impersonal,it’s efficient.
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There are a lot of ways to get paid for writing.
Get paid to write magazine articles (regional,national,niche…)
pro- higher pay per word
con-can be harder to sell
pro- your bio can increase your blog traffic,nonpaying publications are very easy to get published in
Get paid to blog (niche blogging and/or info-products)
pro- you get to focus on one thing you’re probably already doing
con- a lot of people make no money at it because SEO is a skill some people don’t understand
con- can involve learning affiliate marketing and managing sometimes several ad networks
pro- free products to review
Get paid to be a ghost writer
pro- you get to write on a variety of topics
con- you get no credit for it
pro- pay is higher
con- finding gigs is like gambling
Get paid to write articles for revenue share
pro- your articles earn money *forever*
con- it might be a nickel a month
pro- if you learn about search engine optimization,it can be much much higher. The bulk of my income is from revenue share,but most people don’t make anything.
Get paid up-front to write articles
pro- getting paid up front
con- you sell your copyright
pro- determine your own income
con- not much editorial control and your name is on it (usually)
Which sounds most interesting to you?
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Readers- PLEASE add your ideas and expertise to this list because I plan on pasting it into my response from now on,so I’m not retyping it over &over again. If I were smarter,I would have done this a long time ago.
There’s a lot of different ways to be a freelance writer. I’m not an expert on all of them…If you want to be a writer,you might want to first define WHY you want to write. There’s no wrong answer to this,it’s just something you want to keep in mind,so you can avoid working on projects that go against your goals.