Hi, I am new to the site and see a number of threads mentioning a general dislike by marketers for writing for their blog or website. A little bio… I am a 55 year old early retiree following 25 years in the IT world, where my responsibilities ran the gamut from programmer, tech writer, project manager, lead performance engineer and senior consultant. My strengths include strong writing skills, broad-based business knowledge, as well as specific knowledge and interest in the areas of finance, e.g. trading and investment; wealth management; and health and fitness, among others, acquired and honed over a lifetime of interest and study in these areas. I believe I bring a strong work ethic, an innate curiosity and research skill set, and a desire to learn new things, which have served me well in the various facets of my life. My questions… is it possible to derive a decent cash flow as a writer / editor for blog and website marketers? How would I best go about doing this? What kind of compensation is possible? Where might I get more information about this? I do have an interest in eventually setting up my own marketing website or blog. In this instance, is it possible to trade my writing skills and effort in exchange for some internet marketing mentoring? Thanks, Alan
Truth is, making money as a writer online - working for others, might not pay very well unless you're really good and you develop a list of loyal customers who buy your writing. But it's obvious you can make much more from your own writing than charging it out. If you can get a blog with good traffic, an email list etc, you can easily make more. But, you could check out elance, rentacoder, and all the other freelancing sites, as well as ghostblogging sites and make money that way. A quality post is easily worth $50 ~ $100 with tons of research and pictures. an article with only SEO value, maybe $5 ~ $20 at most. But, nothing beats working for yourself.
You have got a number of options: 1) Get writing assignments on sites like rentacoder and also in services section of this forum 2) create lenses on sites like squidoo, hubpages which share revenues. Also associatedcontent 3) Start your own blog and get paid to blog assignments from sites like payperpost.com
I never thought of using squidoo and hub pages to promote a writing service, pretty smart idea... I bet using a tool like the Google Keyword tool you could find niche topics that people are always hunting for content on... using words like "PLR"... "hire a writer"... "ghost writer" "ghost blogger" etc.
As an engineer you should be able to figure out a way to make money online. Aren't engineers the reasons we have everything today? Joking aside, if you write well, and when I say well I mean writing articles that will be mentioned by WSJ, CNBC, Arstechnica, Techcrunch, Wired, and a some other big name "reading" sites then you should start your own blog and if you can get a good following, like the guy who started readwriteweb.com, and he writes pretty well, then you will be better off just writing for your own blog. As convertingcopy said if you sell your writing the most you can make is roughly $100, few dollars more or less, but if you write for your own blog and have a bunch of readers you are likely to make way more than that.