Audit Your Writing Skills

Ways to increase income with your writing

Books and articles are tried and true vehicles for building income and reputation. Of course, people absorb lessons from writings. I remember hearing communication’s expert, Sam Horn speak at an event. Her speech was captivating. I waited in line for quite a while to buy her book titled Pop! on how to create the best taglines and pitches. I was so excited to meet her and all that came out of my mouth was the measly sentence, “Thank you so much for writing this book.” It wasn’t profound. However, her speech gave me energy. You can help people that way too. If you enjoyed writing, had to save $20,000.00 in a year, and couldn’t leave your house much, what would you do? Here’s what I would do. I would leverage my writing skills to create multiple sources of income. Here are some initial strategies I would use.

Assess your writing skills

Survey some articles on the web in various web sources. For example, search PubMed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) and read a few articles. Do you like them? Compare that to articles from Cosmo Magazine, Wired Magazine, The New Yorker, Medium, and various websites to determine what attracts you. Go a little further. Do you enjoy reading only or do you think you could write articles like those? Go to your local library and do the same thing with children’s and adult books. If someone challenged you or offered you $5,000 to write any book, would you write fiction or non-fictions? Borrow some masterworks from the library, especially stories in the public domain. Reading Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol, Treasure Island, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Pride and Prejudice, or any Agatha Christie novel may help you judge your level of skill and desire. Would you feel inspired to write stories like those?

Training

The monetary goal of $20,000 I cited above may be unrealistic. However, you can still set a goal to improve your skill level. Do you need help to improve your writing? How can you gauge the training you need? You could join a writer’s group in your community. As far as formal training goes, the local community college may have a fantastic writing program. Depending on your age, you can get some courses at a discount. You could sign up for a poetry writing or story course. Employ the same strategy if you needed a technical writing certificate.

You don’t have to wait for the finalization of the certificate program to write. Your very first writing class will give you some skills you need to analyze story or write an article. Every class you take gives you tools to use in your writing. Who is to say you won’t end up with a bestseller or notable attention in a year? Now that you have sharpened your writing skills, you may be ready to hunt for jobs or paid writing projects.

Types of Writing

Visit freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer. See how you can establish yourself as a vendor. Survey the gigs currently online, the gig or project fees being requested, and the portfolios currently posted. Make sure the portfolios are not marketing copy but actual jobs the vendor performed online. In your gig, you could offer to do:

content writing like you are seeing here on the blog
copywriting you may see in advertising or promotional material
technical writing generating reports, white papers, articles, and instruction manuals, among other documents

Platforms like Fiverr have a “Pro” or professional category where you can charge higher fees and specialize in certain niches. Fiverr Pros go through a more rigorous vetting process where they provide history and proof of work. If you can manage your time well, the freelancing platform might be just the place for you.

Blogging

From the early years of the Internet, people figured out how to use websites to gain freedom in their lives and careers or just to create an impact. If you have a passion area and a topic you know a lot about, let’s say crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay, then you could create a website or blog and write on it. Some blogging topics are in great demand, meaning millions of internet searches happen daily. High volume internet searches include topics such as personal finance, weight loss, technology, dating, side hustles, and more. Some blogs in these niches, even the federal government’s websites, are formidable competitors. Yet, it’s worth publishing in those categories if it’s not costing you much. You can use the blog for sponsored content and affiliate marketing. To get visibility and high traffic on search engines like Google, bloggers do search engine optimization or SEO. Some institutions like CopyBlogger and Smart Blogger offer courses on how to write for the Internet and optimize your content.

Self-Publishing

Amazon entered the online booksellers market in July 1995. It launched the Amazon Kindle, an e-reader, in 2007 responding to the disruption the Apple’s iPod created. Per a Stacker.Com article, Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos saw the Kindle as the “iPod for books” (Troyer 2018, Internet). Bezos needed books for the e-reader. This period was the gold rush for e-books. Many writers took advantage of Amazon’s call for books and made a living from the royalties. Although the author world is more crowded now, e-books still present an avenue to generate income. Authors can now advertise within the Amazon ecosystem to get attention for their books.

Multiple booksellers exist including, Kobo, Apple Books, Draft2Digital, and Nook. Even more cost friendly audio book narration platforms exist. You can boost your income by recording your fiction or non-fiction books. AI audio narration has improved tremendously and some listeners don’t mind listening to AI audio as long as long as the author discloses the fact.

Wattpad and Radish have further revolutionized the marketplace. These are platforms for serial content. Quite a few people have made a living on these platforms. Although users appear to be much younger, nothing should stop a 60-year-old from quietly joining the revolution.

Write for Revenue or Donations

The wealthy Medici family in Italy sponsored Michelangelo in the 16th century. These days, donation sites, crowd-funding platforms or revenue sharing sites are a clever twist . They include Patreon, Kickstarter, Substack, Medium, and HubPages. Patreon, a play on the word “patron,” is like a fan site or sponsorship platform. People support their favorite artists including writers via this site by donating monthly to that creative person. Many writers use the Patreon model. Tiered donations allow the creative person to give levels of thank-you gifts back to the community. The gifts could include a monthly short story or the ability to ask questions of the writer. Patreon also serves as a place to launch special projects to your patrons as a thank you before rolling them out to the wider marketplace.

Kickstarter works a little differently. Backers pledge to support the project. The writer develops a writing project, let’s say a special book package, consisting of a series of books, some art, a t-shirt, a character named after the backer, or a conference with the writer and other gifts. The sky is the limit on what you can give away once you have done due diligence on the financial side. People then set up a campaign on Kickstarter. They set a funding goal (higher dollar requests are more difficult to attain).

The steepest hill to climb with Kickstarter is that it’s an all-or-nothing platform. If you establish a funding goal of $10,000 and you receive $9,999, you don’t get the money. All the pledges are returned to the backers and the campaign dies. Marketing and promotions are difficult without the author’s or maker’s email list. Yet, some people have done so well. This old but extremely thorough article on Kickstarter mistakes by Thomas Umstattd, Jr. as well as frequent visits to Kickstarter itself will help you understand this landscape. Finally, you can get advice from experts who have done successful Kicstarter campaign.

Substack and Medium pay writers for articles based on the number of viewers who read the articles. Are you great at marketing? Do you have a following of any kind on social media? If yes, then Substack may be the better medium for you. It’s a newsletter platform that helps you build your own following. In the past, writing, production and marketing were separate efforts for producing a newsletter. You had to know design or hire a designer. Then you had to strategize your marketing. All these efforts could be costly. Now, you can do writing, production and marketing on Substack. You have access to your readers’ information, which is a must for building your writer platform. The plus is that your following on Substack is better than it is on social media. You have access to your readers’ contact information.

Tutor Online

Don’t forget the age-old ways of earning money, teaching and tutoring. Despite the advances in education and the rigorous certification demanded of teachers, reading and writing tutors are still a support system for families and schools. Retired teachers can offer their skills online helping K-12 students improve their writing, preparing for exams, or offering editing skills. Teachers can also teach editing skills as part of their course.

Teachers can offer their services to train people in certain languages. For example, people can teach English as a second language in their own city or even in a foreign country. Some teaching services can be scaled. A teacher can teach one student or many in a physical location. That teacher can also offer the training packages online with multiple students downloading material, practicing, and doing homework. In another example, equipment has now been developed to facilitate teaching live in an online setting. Amazon and other retailers now offer a plethora of document viewers that connect to the teacher’s computers to share screens and information with the student’s computer. The Covid Pandemic was a catalyst for a multitude of these changes.

Social Media Management

Some retired adults have a lot more free time than some in the workforce. If they are social media savvy, they can offer to manage other people’s social media accounts. Currently, virtual assistants are being hired to manage social media accounts for some industries—small businesses, non-profit organization, even independent authors. Retired professionals could easily join those virtual assistants who sometimes specialize in social media management. One thing to keep in mind is the time difference from region to region and country to country. Social media is still important enough to help market a business or person.

Ghostwriting

Experienced writers can become ghostwriters. Many individuals are looking for people to help them write their memoirs and other non-fiction and career material. Books are resume enhancers. Experts need them to establish a stronger presence and get more fans in their community. Speakers may need them to get conference invitations and to sell in the back of the room after their presentations. A book is always a great giveaway. Writers can build a simple yet professional ghostwriting website and offer their services.

Grant Writing

Grant writers fall under the technical writing group. There is no certification for grant writing. However, organizations like the Society for Technical Communication offer certification in the field of technical communication. Grant writing is always in demand. It’s the life blood of non-profit organizations and some small businesses. Grant writing has common content, crossing all disciplines. However, it also has content specific to a certain industry. Skilled retirees may not need to get technical writing certification if they are familiar with these industries. They may be serving the organization disbursing grants in their local community or city. It’s an easy way to learn what is required of the grantor institution. In the end, that grant-writing knowledge can help others.

Writing Courses

Many authors make a living by providing writing instruction courses and books. Joanna Penn, a British author who publishes a podcast called the Creative Penn, does an annual reporting on her earnings. Each year she points out to the audience that she earns more from her non-fiction books than her fiction books. Her 16 non-fiction books include How to Write A Novel, Your Author Business Plan, and How to Make a Living with Your Writing. Several options are available to market writing courses and books. They include setting up a course on platforms like Teachable and cross promoting your books. Other ways include writing and doing podcast interviews. Of course, the old standby always works. Libraries, churches, and local business like restaurants, pubs, and other kinds of shops sometimes hold writers’ poetry events and book launches for authors.

As a writer just starting out, you can use one or a combination of these strategies to write and market that content. It doesn’t promise to deliver $20,000.00 in a year, but good research, smart work and leveraging of all these skills could earn you a portion of your monetary goal.

References

Devery, Kate. June 21, 2019. How to Become a Fiverr Pro. Fiverr.Com. <https://blog.fiverr.com/post/how-to-become-a-fiverr-pro>(Retrieved May 1, 2023).

Troyer, Madison. December 7, 2018. A Timeline of Amazon’s Evolution From Bookstore to Global Powerhouse. Business & Economy Section. Stacker.Com. https://stacker.com/business-economy/timeline-amazons-evolution-bookstore-global-powerhouse (Retrieved May, 4, 2023).

Umstattd Jr., Thomas. May 21, 2014. Seven Kickstarter Mistakes We Made On MyBookTable. AuthorMedia.Com. < https://www.authormedia.com/how-to-use-kickstarter-to-fund-your-next-book-project/> (Retrieved on April 30, 2023)