Loading...
Answers
MenuHow can a writer generate income out of side projects?
Answers
Loving something and being passionate about it, doesn't always mean you are good at it. Fictional writing and professional commercial writing are two separate things. If you are a good writer, there are opportunities for freelance writing gigs (copywriting, technical writing, catalog work, long form, short form, blurb, sales, etc.). It is a competitive space, but a good online portfolio with writing samples and consistent perseverance can lead to more work. If you don't have any commercial experience or samples, proof-reading jobs are a good place start.
If you're a strong writer and willing to learn some new skills, I'd recommend that you consider writing white papers for B2B companies. White papers are typically 5-12 page reports (including basic graphics) that discuss a solution to a business or technical problem for about 85% of the document and how a company's service, product or technology solves it for the last 15%.
As a new grad, you are unlikely to successfully "author" a white paper, but you could use your writing skills to capture, organize and present a subject matter expert's information. Two great ways to do this are 1) interviewing the people at the company who know the material but don't have time to write or 2) using information from one of the company's webinars as the basis for the white paper. You could offer add-on services like blog posts and social media blurbs to promote the white paper.
Unlike freelancing blog posts, which is popular among new grads but typically only pays $25-50 per post, you can typically charge $400-$800 for a well-written white paper.
To get started, you should choose an industry area that interests you and start reading as many white papers in that niche as you can find. Get a feel for the language, the style, the length, the approach, etc. Try writing one or two from webinars on spec to practice your style and get some experience. Then start reaching out to marketing directors and marketing consultants in the niche to build a clientele.
Good luck!
Hey - I would highly recommend checking out Contently or one of the other content marketing companies that uses contract writers. The company Contently is amazing and they have like 50,000+ contract writers like you.
We're co-passionate then.
Pity we're addicted to what is rarely remunerative, but there are ways to parlay your writing into a side income. Nearly every commercial industry depends on writing in some form or other. And content marketing is quite important online these days for any website.
Contently is probably a good suggestion. I can't speak from experience, since I'm not a freelance article writer. But many people earn well above $1000 per month that way.
You could become a specialist: technical writing, grant writing, editing. Editing pays very well, I believe, if you can stomach it.
I might be able to suggest a few other directions for you to consider if I knew more about you. Don't know if that would be worth a 15-minute call or not, but that's how I'd handle it.
What's the 9-5 job? Apart from being a novelist, what other hobbies, interests, experience, knowledge do you have?
A writer generate income out of side projects by using following ways:
1. Make Money by Creating Collateral for Content-Hungry Businesses
More and more businesses are getting into the content game. This has created a market for smart writers who can write for a specific audience. Breaking into this market can be tough without a few contacts to get you started, but it is not impossible. One smart way to differentiate yourself is to build your own platform, using blogging and guest blogging to demonstrate the expertise you hope to harness for others.
2. Get Paid to Write by Becoming a Best-Selling Kindle Author
Ten years ago, writing a best-selling book was a distant dream for most writers and self-publishing on Kindle was often dismissed as a vanity exercise. But today, thanks largely to Amazon and Kindle, the self-published book market is gigantic and making money from writing books is far more achievable. To succeed, you need to be commercially minded and target an established market with proven demand from readers. However, according to a report earlier this year from Author Earnings, 1,600 indie authors are earning $25K or above from Amazon book sales, and 1,000 published their first book three years ago or less. Nonfiction is the most natural fit for the average blogger, and if you are blogging in a popular niche, the chances are that books covering similar topics will also be popular. If you want to find success as a self-nonfiction author, check out Steve Scott. Fiction writing is arguably tougher, but there is no denying that your earning potential if you do hit it big, is much larger. And it is no coincidence that the most famous self-publishing successes are all fiction titles. Joanna Penn is a prolific fiction author, and her site is rich with information about making it as a fiction writer. But in either case, you need to be led by the market for topic selection. One major advantage of this route is that you continue to earn money from your back catalogue, sometimes far into the future.
3. Make Money Writing as a Conversion-Focused Copywriter
Copywriting, in a nutshell, is writing that is designed to make readers take a specific action. Copywriting may not seem fundamentally different to other forms of writing, but in practice, it is a discipline all its own. So, unless you have a copywriting background be prepared to invest a lot of time in learning the fundamentals. The most famous training course on copywriting is probably AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting. Notwithstanding the steep learning curve, the rewards of copywriting can be significant. A high-converting sales page might earn you $2,000, plus a slice of the revenues too. As a bonus, a foundation in copywriting will also be valuable should you ever decide to sell your own products.
4. Build a Niche Blog and Promote Third Party Products
So if your dream is to build a six-figure blog, you'd better be as excited about the prospect of running a business as you are about writing your next post. But there is a path to making money from a blog where you still spend a good proportion of your time writing. Promoting affiliate products is a much smarter way to start earning money from a blog than creating your own product. With an affiliate product, someone else has already done the hard work of validating the market, building the product, and enhancing it based on customer feedback. Someone else gets to handle the pre-sales inquiries, payments, refunds, and product support. Ideally, you will know what products you will sell even before starting your blog because then you are growing an audience that perfectly matches your offer. Once you are in a groove, you can think about adding your own products to the mix, using your writing skills and topic knowledge to deliver a specific result that readers are willing to pay for. But when you are starting a blog, promoting affiliate products is the most realistic, and least risky, way to make a living from writing.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Related Questions
-
To make 50k per month, what are some proven online business models? Which niches have good potential for this?
I think you need to think outside the box. You can definitely make 50k a month but someone just giving you ideas is not going to help you. Remember Ideas are just 1% execution is 99%. Find something you're passionate about. Find a problem that people have daily that can be solved. But if you wan't ideas: E-Commerce is going to be really big over the net few years. Helping people increase their conversion rate will definitely make you over 50k a year if you can execute it right.AC
-
My startup just failed. What could I start to "immediately" generate $1,000/mo?
The quickest path to cash is almost always consulting. Be very specific about what it is you can offer. Don't just offer "business consulting". Find a niche and serve it. Reach out to your network, including friends and family and ask if they need or know of anyone who might want to hear about what your consulting has to offer. That will be way faster than trying to go at it from scratch or cold calling. If you call 100 people in your network this week, you will have a consulting gig within 3 weeks. Good luck, and let me know if you'd like advice on entering a digital marketing/lead generation consulting niche. I've grown from zero to $8,000 of monthly recurring payments in the last 40 days! DaveDR
-
How was SnapChat able to grow so quickly?
I'm answering your question assuming that you hope to be able to replicate it's own success in your own mobile app. There are a couple of factors responsible for it's growth that are instructive to anyone building a mobile app. "Leveraging the intimacy and privacy of the mobile phone." We now have an *intimate* relationship with our phone like no other device in the history of technology. Every internet company that started before around 2010 has built their core interactions around "the old web" one which was accessed primarily via a browser on a computer. Companies that start with a clean slate, should be building their interactions around how to do whatever the app is supposed to do while leveraging what is unique to people's relationship to their mobile devices. Photo-sharing has become a core part of the way we communicate now. Snapchat built something that provided an experience that leveraged the feeling of privacy and intimacy that is unique to mobile. "Provided an escape from the "maturity" of other online services." Too many parents, aunts, uncles and other "old people" have encroached into the social networks of teens and young people. As a result, they've had a desire to find places to express themselves in places inaccessible by older generations. An important distinction is that it's not just parents and relatives that young people are trying to avoid, but also employers & colleges who are increasingly using "mature" social networks to review applicants. "Leveraged PR even bad PR" The fact that the app got so much press about it being used to sext was perfect PR for the company, as it essentially reinforced the brand experience that it has today. Essentially, "if it's safe enough to send a sext, it's safe for any kind of communication I want to have." And although the safety and security of Snapchat is actually not as advertised, it still enjoys the reputation of having less impact than any primarily web-based service. Building a successful mobile application is one of the hardest challenges to face designers, programmers and entrepreneurs in the history of writing software. Happy to talk to you if you're considering building a mobile app, about what I've learned about the "table stakes" for success.TW
-
How can I make a million dollars?
First, I agree with Chad in that the pure pursuit of money is unlikely to render anything significant. By using a monetary value as a primary goal, you're only diluting the real drivers of success: passion, crafting great customer experiences, building an incredible team and culture etc. That said, making $1m isn't that hard. :) I love this thinking by Amy Hoy and that's how I would go about making $1m: http://unicornfree.com/30x500. Using that logic, this is what I'd do: * To earn $1m in a year, I need to earn +- $80k a month. * To earn $80k a month, I need 1600 customers paying me $50 per month. * So what can I build that could attract 1600 people to pay me $50? * Or, what could I build that could attract 400 people to pay me $200 per month? This logic works on two drivers: * Cumulative revenue and growth. So SaaS works best in this regard, as you only need to focus on having new signups that are greater than your churn. * Building something that people are willing to (really) pay for and going for quality over quantity. If you are building something that sells for $5 pm, you'll need to sell at much higher volumes (which are tricky). In terms of doing that, these are the areas of my business that I would prioritize: 1. Build an awesome team that do things they're passionate about. 2. Prioritize customer experiences above anything else. Do everything in your power (regardless of whether it can't scale) to add value and help your customers. 3. Build a brand and reputation that has long-lasting value.AP
-
How much equity should I ask as a CMO in a startup?
Greater risk = greater equity. How likely is this to fail or just break even? If you aren't receiving salary yet are among 4-6 non-founders with equivalent sweat investment, all of whom are lower on the totem pole than the two founders, figure out: 1) Taking into account all likely outcomes, what is the most likely outcome in terms of exit? (ex: $10MM.) Keep in mind that 90%+ of all tech startups fail (Allmand Law study), and of those that succeed 88% of M&A deals are under $100MM. Startups that exit at $1B+ are so rare they are called "unicorns"... so don't count on that, no matter how exciting it feels right now. 2) Figure out what 1% equity would give you in terms of payout for the most likely exit. For example, a $10MM exit would give you $100k for every 1% you own. 3) Decide what the chance is that the startup will fail / go bankrupt / get stuck at a $1MM business with no exit in sight. (According to Allman Law's study, 10% stay in business - and far fewer than that actually exit). 4) Multiply the % chance of success by the likely outcome if successful. Now each 1% of equity is worth $10k. You could get lucky and have it be worth millions, or it could be worth nothing. (With the hypothetical numbers I'm giving here, including the odds, you are working for $10k per 1% equity received if the most likely exit is $10MM and the % chance of failure is 90%.) 5) Come up with a vesting path. Commit to one year, get X equity at the end. If you were salaried, the path would be more like 4 years, but since it's free you deserve instant equity as long as you follow through for a reasonable period of time. 6) Assuming you get agreement in writing from the founders, what amount of $ would you take in exchange for 12 months of free work? Now multiply that by 2 to factor in the fact that the payout would be far down the road, and that there is risk. 7) What percentage share of equity would you need in order to equal that payout on exit? 8) Multiply that number by 2-3x to account for likely dilution over time. 9) If the founders aren't willing to give you that much equity in writing, then it's time to move on! If they are, then decide whether you're willing to take the risk in exchange for potentially big rewards (and of course, potentially empty pockets). It's a fascinating topic with a lot of speculation involved, so if you want to discuss in depth, set up a call with me on Clarity. Hope that helps!RD
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.