How to earn money writing: 10 business ideas if you like to write

Do you like to write? Then maybe you fancy finding ways to make money writing. That is why I have prepared a list with a selection of business ideas for writers. In most cases, they are concepts for small businesses, freelance type, but you can live very well from them, individually or jointly. Here are ten ideas.

1. Ghostwriter

A ghostwriter, also known as black, is a person hired to write works on behalf of another. In other words, the autobiography, short story, or novel will be published under the name of an author, usually famous, while the writing work will have been done by someone else.

This happens very often because many famous people do not have the time, the desire, or the literary talent to write a quality book. In this case, your job will be to go find people who may have business potential and propose to help them write something, be it an autobiography, be it an advice book based on their activity, or any other publication.

It is an activity where recommendations work a lot, so if you get some influential clients, you can have access to more people.

2. Writing for small business

In many small businesses, the people who run the business are very good at what they do, but not at writing, and they need the support of another person to write many documents, particularly in external communication. One way to make money writing is precise to help these small businesses, and not lose customers by not taking care of their writing.

3. Do students work

You cannot imagine the number of times that students have contacted me to hire my business plan preparation service just because they had to make a business plan for a subject, and they did not want to do it (or they did not know how). Until now, I have always said no, because my opinion is that when a teacher asks for an exercise to be done, it has a training purpose, and I am not going to interfere in the training of a person, even though he or she is the ask me a favor But clearly there is a market for doing student papers, and if you like to write, it could be a pretty profitable way to make a living, provided you have no moral objections.

4. Help candidates write their CVs and motivation letters

Getting a job is complicated, and to stand out, one of the few tools available is a resume and a letter of motivation. Not everyone has the gift of knowing how to write well. In a CV you can say the same thing in a short and elegant way or in a confusing and long way. In the motivation letter, the impact of a good style is even greater. Helping those candidates improve their chances of passing the selection filters is another way to tap into your love of writing.

5. Have a blog

Perhaps the best-known option to earn money writing is to have your own blog. The truth is that you can generate interesting income, especially if you use your platform as a tool to sell your own products, which in this case should also have a literary basis since that is what you like. But you have to be aware that there are many blogs, therefore there is a lot of competition to stand out both in search engine results and in social networks. And do not forget that a blog takes time: you do not get traffic from one day to the next, and you need to publish in a very regular way, both to satisfy your readers and search engines.

6. Being a freelance reporter

If you are a journalist, one of the most original ways to earn money thanks to your writing talent is to be a freelance reporter. With the difficulties of the traditional press, independent professionals are increasingly being used for press content. This means that you can work for different media, and therefore in theory you could have a significant income. Of course, there are many journalists in the market and quite a lot of competition.

7. Correct the works of others

If you are not familiar with the world of publishing, you should know that one of the most important stages before publishing a book is the proofreading of the work. There are two types of proofreading: one for the most common errors (typography and grammar) and one for correcting style. Authors who self-publish their works usually entrust this proofreading phase to acquaintances or do it themselves, but in the professional publishing sector, proofreaders are hired, who charge per word, similar to translators.

8. Write articles for company publications

Companies need original and quality content for their newsletters, their web pages, their blogs, and any other publication they may need. And often, they don't have their own writing team, instead, they look for freelance writers to be able to prepare that content. If you manage to create a portfolio of several companies in a sector whose subject matter you control, you can end up having an interesting business and earn a lot of money writing.

9. Publish your own book

The reason for talking about this option near the end of this article is because it is not easy to get money selling your own book. But it is not impossible either. Based on my experience and that of several people I know, what usually works best to sell a book is to publish it in print and spread it through your network of contacts. Of course, you have to arm yourself with patience and organize events, to gradually sell the copies. In addition, that requires you to have a very large network of contacts, or be very committed to your work, to the point of recommending the book to third parties, so that you can sell to more people. You always have the risk of ending up with a stock of unsold books for a long time, but with effort, they can be sold.

Another option is to sell an electronic format. For that, you can publish your book on Amazon or other platforms, or you can simply use a blog as your platform to get readers. Of course, it cannot be a blog dedicated only to your book. For it to work, you should have a blog on a topic, get visitors, and once you have them, use it to promote and sell your book.

10. Translate

Contrary to what many people may think, translation is not an automatic exercise. That's why translation programs keep failing a lot. Translating is understanding the meaning of a sentence in one language, and expressing it again in another language. This usually implies important modifications of style and vocabulary. In other words: translating is an exercise in rewriting. Therefore, if you speak at least two languages, you should consider the option of translating, not only business documents but also books. For example, you could go looking at the works of independent writers with some success on the Internet and propose to translate their book into another language. A native Anglophone person could translate one of the successful independent works of Amazon Spain, to publish it on the platforms of the United Kingdom or the United States of the American giant, markets with much more potential for the author.

To get paid you would have two options: the classic system is by words, but it is very likely that the authors will not be willing to pay you a significant amount without knowing if they will be able to sell their book in another language later. For this reason, a commission can be considered on the sales of the translated version. Or any combination between a fixed amount and a variable amount.