Every writer dreams of the day they can profit from their writing. While there are many income opportunities for writers, each method has its drawbacks.
Newspaper and magazine reporters can make good money, but their subject matter is often tightly regulated and controlled. Corporate writing can be even more lucrative, but even more tightly controlled. Freelance writing offers more freedom, but it's also more uncertain. Book publishing is even more uncertain. So what's a writer to do?
Forget all those old writing methods and focus on the internet. Don't write for anyone but yourself. You can really profit from writing only about what interests you. Don't worry about the market or the editors. Write for yourself. Not only will it be more fun and rewarding for your soul, but also for your checking account.
I'm going to share a simple (and inexpensive) 10-step formula that can help you get started with your own writing today, but first I want to share one important fact.
This is not a get rich quick scheme. It will take some time, maybe up to three months to start earning, but if you keep at it, you should see your income grow exponentially every month and you should be able to count on that income and know what you need to do to they increased it. You will have complete control over your income and that is very powerful.
1. Create a blog account on one of the free blogging sites available online (we previously used http://Blogger.com, but there are many other good options). This will serve as your internet base. It really is the cheapest and easiest way to get online today. Yes, you can create a free website on one of the many available, but blogs are more attractive to search engines. Plus, they offer you the option of personalization, but you spend most of your energy on content, which is the king of the internet and the real reason you want an internet presence.
2. Now sign up for a free ClickBank affiliate account that will give you instant access to something to sell.
3. Sign up with a contextual or pay-per-click advertiser like Google, Yahoo, Revenue Pilot or SearchFeed and start earning from visitors and customers.
4. Grow your blog. Make 10 your immediate goal and then work your way up to 25, 50 and 100 and so on. Your contributions may be your opinions, thoughts or musings; poems or short stories; or articles.
5. Promote your blog through article marketing, link development and submitting your blog. I would suggest that you focus primarily on article marketing as it offers you the ability to not only build links but also provide traffic, plus it is easy for you as a writer to create articles or use a selection of material that you have already created for your blog. .
Yes, it really is that simple, and while you can grow later by buying your own domain name (or names) and publishing your blog on your own website, you don't need to (and probably should avoid) investing money in expensive tools.
Getting started on the web can be free (as you can see above) or cheap if you focus on what you really need. The simple truth is that you don't need a lot of fancy, expensive tools and programs. In the long run, a domain name is a good investment. A domain name will cost you between $5 and $10 per year, depending on whether you go with .com or .info (or one of the many other options available). You don't need to find web hosting or create a website. For now, simply point the domain to your blog and continue to grow and promote your blog. The advantage of owning your own domain name is simply that later, when you have the money, time and knowledge to develop your website, the domain name will already exist and will be filtered through search engines. It also offers some marketing benefits that a free blog cannot.
At some point you may decide you want more flexibility and control than a free blog can offer, and that's when you'll want to run your own website. You can find a good web host for as little as $5 a month, and you shouldn't pay more than $20 a month for a reputable host that offers all the tools and utilities you might need for your current website—including blogging software. You may need to upgrade, but until then you know your income and your needs.
Really, the only other regular expense you might consider to make your online store complete would be a mailing list tool. You can do this for as little as $20 a month and it will be worth every penny in sales, customer service and promotion. But it's not necessary to begin with, and you may decide it's not important to your efforts, so you can skip it altogether.
Once you have your blog set up and monetized (by offering ClickBank products, advertising and/or selling text links), you are in a position to start profiting from your writing. The way to profit from it is to increase traffic, so you need to take your article marketing efforts seriously because every article you distribute will generate instant traffic and create backlinks for search engine optimization. You also need to continue to grow your blog by adding new content regularly. This will create repeat visitors and bring in the search engines again and again. Just publishing new articles and new blog posts every week will increase your traffic. The more articles and entries you create – the more traffic you will generate.
Once you find your groove with your existing blog, you may well decide to branch out and create a second blog on a different or related topic. Now you should be able to work even faster because you are more experienced, but probably also more motivated because you can see how rewarding writing for fun and profit can be.
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