7 Ways Strong Writing Skills Can Help You Earn Money
Considering how much of one’s time in high school and college is spent writing essays, term papers, and other kinds of assignments, it is only natural to start asking yourself, “Why pay so much attention to such a useless skill? It is not like it has any practical uses, either right now or in terms of future careers. Why bother with it?”
Well, while not everybody is cut out to be good at writing, if you happen to like putting your thoughts on paper, getting better at it may be well worth it. Contrary to what you may believe, you can find many practical applications of this skill – and in this article, we will share some of them.
When we suggest that you write a blog, we do not mean a kind of blog where you share your thoughts in a stream of consciousness, describe how you spent your day or how you reacted to something – something like this can be interesting (if only barely) only to your closest friends and relatives. No, by a blog we mean something that serves a particular and narrowly defined purpose: e.g., you share your experience in essay writing or solving particular tech-related problems, or finding cheap solutions for home improvement. In other words, it should be something useful and focused.
However, be ready to put a lot of time, effort, and research into your blog before it starts making you any money. With the Internet already chock-full of all kinds of content, it is quite hard to cut out a niche for yourself.
A ghostwriter is someone who takes someone else’s thoughts and ideas and writes texts based on them. It is not a kind of service people speak about often, but there are plenty of people who have to (or think they have to) something valuable to say yet do not have time or sufficient writing ability to express themselves. Ghostwriters help them put their thoughts into a presentable written form without putting their own names on it. Ghostwriting is much more widespread than you may believe – for example, many (if not most) books written by non-writers are actually the work of ghostwriters. Therefore, if you are good at expressing yourself in writing, it can be a lucrative field of work for you.
“How can I be a writing coach? I have enough trouble with my own writing assignments, who is going to listen to me trying to teach them how to write?” If you currently think something along these lines, then consider this: if you usually get good grades for your essays and suchlike and sometimes earned praise from your professors, you can rest assured that you write better than the absolute majority of other people. Most people are not particularly good at expressing themselves in writing, and many of them are desperate to learn how to get better at it. If your grades for writing are sufficiently high, it is a good indicator that you have something to teach others.
Let us be honest: as long as students are forced to write essays and other kinds of papers, some of them will hire other people to help them with it. As we already said, not all people are cut out to be writers, and not all people want to be writers. So, if you have mastered the art of writing essays that produce a pleasant impression on your professors, do not hesitate to offer your services to those who are less gifted in this respect. There will never be a shortage of those coming to you and saying, “Do my essay for me”.
For the last few years, content marketing – that is, the strategy of attracting customers by offering them unique valuable content – has been all the rage across the board. More and more businesses from a variety of industries begin to understand the potential value of this approach and start to look for steady sources of high-quality original content. This created a huge opportunity for people who know how to produce such a commodity – and you can become one of them. However, you may have to be ready to spend quite a bit of time building up your portfolio and learning at least the fundamentals of marketing and SEO.
Copywriting, when boiled down to its essentials, is the art of writing with the purpose of making the reader take a particular action: make a purchase, subscribe to a mailing list, follow an account on social media. It is fundamentally different from most other types of writing because it is usually immediately obvious whether a copywriting text does its job. If the reader does what you want, you have achieved your goal. If the desired action is not taken, you are doing something wrong. There are no surefire methods – your approach should differ depending on what kind of text you write, what product you sell, what your audience is, and dozens of other factors. It can be tough to find the right voice, but it is certainly worth it, as copywriting is always in high demand.
For a long time, writing and self-publishing books were viewed as an expensive and pointless exercise in vanity. And, let us be honest, usually, it was exactly this. However, with the rise of Amazon and Kindle, the situation changed dramatically. Today, self-publishing a book does not cost nearly as much as it used to, and thousands of authors are successfully involved in this sort of venture. So, if you have something to say, you can try it out without spending a fortune on getting your work into print.
As you can see, writing is not merely a useless exercise you get to do to get credits in college. It can be a fulfilling job in its own right – you just have to apply some effort and ingenuity to it.
