How To Profit From Your Writing

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but it wasn’t until I actually wrote that I had even a remote chance of being a real writer. The next step was in learning how to profit from your writing, and here are just a few ideas on how you can accomplish this goal. Spoiler Alert: It’s easier than you ever imagined to earn money as a writer.

Here’s a unique opportunity that allows you to help people tell their story. Many people want to publish their own biography or a memoir, but don’t have the writing skills to put it together. In fact, many famous biographies were not written by their authors, but instead were ghostwritten. That’s where your services can come in. And in some cases, you might even get credit as a co-author.

Now you may want to do this for passive income as well. Instead of doing all the hard work of putting together a memoir or biography, teach people how to write their own, so they can do it themselves. You can create an information product about the process that you can sell repeatedly online. Or once you have achieved success on your own in this area, you can teach other aspiring memoir writers to break into the market.This is the ‘each one, teach one’ philosophy that I simply love.

Book proposals also offer you an excellent opportunity to profit from your writing. Writers who want their books to be published by a more traditional, (rather than self-publishing) publishing company will need a book proposal. This proposal sells the idea of why the book should be published and includes an overview of the book, its market, and competition.

A book proposal is a specialized type of writing that needs to be detailed and persuasive. Proposals can be used for both works of fiction and nonfiction, so there are a variety of types of clients you can work with over time.

Be sure to focus on results to make a name for yourself. While not all of your clients will get book deals because of the book proposals you prepare for them to send out to publishers, the success rate you do achieve will be critical in growing your opportunities in the future. Always follow up with your clients to find out how things went and then use those success stories as case studies to showcase your expertise.

Another form of writing for hire is copywriting, or web sales copy. Copywriting is the art of writing material that helps convert readers into customers. This can encompass everything from email messages to advertisements to online sales pages. Any marketing material often entails some level of copywriting. You can do things like slogan writing, brochures, ad copy, sales letters, product descriptions and more. Copywriters are in high demand and once you have a proven track record, you’ll have clients knocking on your door.

Make sure to track your results, in terms of sales and conversion, from the very beginning. Writing web sales copy is a results driven business and your prospective clients will want to know you can get them more leads and customers. Keep a record of specific conversion rates and help your clients improve those rates as part of a value-added service.

Published authors and online entrepreneurs Alice Seba and Ron Douglas, founders of the Writer Help Wanted Project, have an excellent program that takes you step by step through the process of learning how to profit from your writing. I would encourage you to get involved with this program, as I and so many others have done.