How I Made $11,000 From Writing in 30 Days
By: Tim Denning
Tags: Money, Self Improvement, Medium, Writing, Life

Making MONEY

Once you have earned the right to make money from writing, the ways to do it are fairly straight forward. But they’re often hidden in the dark by people who would prefer to charge you money to tell you how they monetize their words.

Here is how you make money from writing:

A paid column

If you write for long enough, your work will get noticed. Large publications pay good writers to publish exclusive articles on their website.

Some pay per month and others pay per article. So far, I have only been paid per article, but I know a few writers that are paid a monthly fee (retainer) to write.

Money from Medium

Medium has a partner program where they will pay anybody, despite their experience, based on the engagement on their article.

It might only be a few dollars in the beginning, but what is most important is this: Even only getting $10 a month from Medium makes you a paid writer and the mental shift that does to you is incredibly powerful.

Ghostwriting

Boy, this one is hidden and not something that you can Google. It’s the secret dark art of the writers’ world that many big names do not want you to know about.

All those CEOs, entrepreneurs, leaders, and influencers often have someone that does ghostwriting for them. If you are okay to write and not be credited for it in return for stupid amounts of money, then this is one way a proven writer with experience can make some easy, ongoing cash.

These opportunities will come to you directly and you can also seek them out by sending direct messages on platforms such as LinkedIn and Instagram to people who post a lot. Don’t spam them with sales pitches and just focus on sending them a link to your writing with a direct “I can do this for you.”

Consulting

Writing is one of the biggest pain-in-the-asses for businesses. They all have to do it and a lot of them don’t have the time or talent to do so.

Without too much effort, if you write where the eyeballs are, then businesses will come to you asking for help. You can consult to them by helping them find writers, mapping out content, and inspiring them to keep going.

When I get these offers directly, I try my best to use manners. Saying something like “I have a few key articles (provide links) about how I do it and I also do part-time consulting for those who need something more. What option makes sense for you?”

It’s soft, polite, non-egotistical and most of all, helpful. Copy and paste the text above if you are lost and don’t know how to turn inquiries into consulting.

One-to-one coaching

Writing helps give you a voice and it can also help you be a teacher. Some people are perfectly happy being taught by the words you write for free and that is completely fine.

Other people want to go deeper and don’t just want your advice; they want you to hold them accountable, which is another way of saying they want you to coach them.

Anyone can be a coach and writing is one way to become one and get paid for it. My first few clients were charged nothing so that I could gain the experience and figure out how to structure it.

My coaching structure ended up looking like this:

A free consultation upfront to ensure I was a fit for the client and they were a fit for me

Ten-week chunks of coaching paid upfront via PayPal

A specific area to cover each week

One to two homework tasks for the client every week

A final assessment at the end of ten weeks

A soft offer to continue after ten weeks if it made sense (sometimes it didn’t)

Speaking at events for a fee

When you develop a voice, people again want you to go that extra step and help their teams — sports teams, leadership teams, business teams, not-for-profit teams — with your knowledge and experience.

The price range for this varies greatly and a lot of it comes down to how good you are at negotiating. I’m going to be completely transparent and say that I have been offered anywhere from $5000-$10,000 for up to sixty minutes of speaking.

Someone I know gets $20,000-$40,000 for one hour, plus business class flights and five-star accommodation. There is another dude I know who is just starting out and gets $500 a talk.

The price range is endless but it’s another way to make money from writing.

An online course

I launched one last month and it flopped—and I wrote about it, as it was 100% my fault. With that aside, you can still make good money helping beginners in your field of expertise.

I created a course a few years back that did pretty well and often it comes down to how good the topic is that you are teaching.

Like with most of the advice in this article, don’t overdo it, okay?

YouTube ads

Many writers also become vloggers as another way to express themselves. If you want to get really creative, you can also embed your own videos in your writing as another tool to connect with the audience.

YouTube is a long game and having a very deep and narrow niche tends to work best. If you can pump out lots of videos that are 5–10 minutes long every week, after a year or so, you can generate money from it via ads.

My promise at the start of this article was not to sell you the dream too much, so I want to add one thing: YouTube is one of the hardest games to play given how long the platform has been around for. Getting views is not easy, so you really need to be dedicated to it, otherwise just stick with the writing.