How To Make Money With Your Writing

I’m going to be honest, I haven’t made much money with my writing. Now before you click away, I have studied writing for a long time. I started studying the art of writing and promotion more seriously when I was nineteen. I used to read every piece of writing and marketing advice that I would come across online. Some of the advice was good, and some was of it awful, but I did manage to learn from all of it. So, what are the most important things that I took away from my years of research?

Don’t Write Thinking You’re Going to be a Millionaire

Reaching the level of success that Stephan King and J.K. Rowling have is almost impossible, but maybe you’ll bring in a few hundred dollars instead. If you’re writing to become wealthy, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Realistically, you should be writing because you have a passion for the art, although the amount of celebrity books out there tells you that’s not the reason everyone writes.

Wait, but isn’t the title of this piece alluding to the fact that I can make money through writing? Why are you telling me that I can’t make money through writing?

Before you click away, I didn’t say you can’t make money through writing. You can make money through writing, just don’t expect to add six zeros to whatever your bank account balance is.

Treat Writing as a Business

I made the most money in my writing career during the months when I treated writing like a business. I took what I learned from the business courses I’d taken in college and applied it to my writing. I got a planner on clearance from Michael’s and started tracking my views. I paid close attention to which of my pieces did the best and attempted to write similar stories. I also kept track of how much money I was bringing in and tracked my growth closely. I brainstormed my ideas well in advance and planned when I would write those stories.

Write

There’s nothing I can write under this category that hasn’t been said before. You must write to make money from your writing. You should be writing often, and on topics that either sell well or personally interest you. The topics that personally interest you may not do as well, as I have written about Death Note and that article didn’t get a lot of views (despite being distributed on Medium).

Edit

This one should also go without saying. No one is going to want to read a poorly written book/article. A lot of readers will add you to their ‘Do Not Read’ list because of poor grammar/spelling. Make sure to at least run your writing through spell check and Grammarly.

Titles

Your title should be eye-catching enough to draw in readers. It should also give a basic premise of what the story is about. I recently wrote about a guy at work who got me fired by hitting on me, and I made sure to present that in the title. I made sure the title was something bound to draw in readers. You should also be choosing relevant pictures to go along with your writing.

Market

Readers can’t read your work if they don’t know it exists, so you’ve got to tell them. You also want to be very careful with how you do this. No one is going to want to read your work if you’re spamming links like you’re an MLM. Other writers get it, you wrote a great story and you want others to read it. We all face the same struggle. The best thing you can do to promote your writing is to join writing groups and build personal relationships with other writers/readers. If you’re in a group, you’ll get more reads the more you engage with others. Also, whenever you share your writing, you should include a personal note that tells the readers a little bit about the writing or asks a question. People are more likely to engage if you give them something to engage with.

Know Your Audience

I am more willing to read an article if the subject matter is something, I’m already interested in. It’s possible that if you have an interest in something, there are already groups where you go to discuss these topics. For example, I’ve written about movies and often discuss movies online or with friends. I would share my articles in those groups or with friends who I thought would be interested in reading my take on the topic.

Use Links Within Your Story

You may have noticed that I’ve linked to multiple stories, this is something you should be doing. If you have a topic that relates to a prior topic or sets an example and you link it, other readers may be inspired to click your links. This will bring in more views/money for you. Only link the topic if it relates to a previous post since no one is going to click on your article about writing and then go straight to your article about Britney Spears. Also, if you have any affiliate links, it’s a good idea to include them in product reviews.

Ask for Tips

If you’re writing on a website where the authors can take tips you might want to leave a little note at the bottom of your story asking politely for a small tip. I’m not an expert on the topic of tipping, but I have gotten tips when a reader felt that they connected with the words I’d written. I’ve only asked for tips on one of my articles but quickly ditched the notion altogether. I didn’t stop asking for tips because I didn’t want them, but because asking for tips didn’t seem natural to me. If you decide to ask for tips, make sure you do so in a natural and non-pushy way.