What Online Writing Career Do You Want?

The online writing business is so large that you simply cannot provide the online writing needs of every people. You may start by experimenting what you want to do in terms of an online writing career. However, ultimately you have to narrow down on what you would specialize in. Otherwise you would confuse your potential clients which could mean lost sales.

If you are an online writer you would fall under one of these categories:
1. Employee
2. Freelancer
3. Specialist
4. Website Builder
5. Writing Content Creator
6. Story Content Creator


Just remember that just like anything in life nothing is 100 percent pure. You may be a combination or combinations of any of these categories. Now let us tackle each one of them:

1. Employee:

You work full-time for someone else. You either work in a brick and mortar company or remotely from your home and anywhere else. As an employee you arguably have a stable work life. This means reliable and scheduled salary payments, benefits like health and insurance and the support of your company.

There are many freelancers and business owners who would like to belittle you for working under a company especially if you are in low position and earning a small salary. The trend today seems to be the entrepreneur and the perceived riches and freedom it brings.

But there are many people like you who are just happy to do their work without being involved in the complex undertaking of running a business. To you being an employee just means working for pay and nothing else. You could have other interests besides work and money like family, community, sports, hobbies and so on.

For an online writer who works for a company especially if you work remotely consider that you would be gambling the security and benefits that working for a company provides if you are planning to do your own online writing business.

Your best move would be to gradually transition into starting your own writing business by doing online writing jobs after work hours. You are lucky that these days the internet accommodates this.

Although more demanding of your time you retain the security and benefits of working for a company while also satisfying your desire or even just interest in creating your own online writing business. Your company won’t get confused and so thus your own clients.

2. Freelancer:

As the name suggests you are primarily interested in a writing career where you write for someone else but not in a full-time basis. Unlike a Specialist which I would discuss next you do not specialize in certain subjects. You are a “mercenary for hire” so to say. You write for writing’s sake. The act of writing excites you more than anything else.

You have no problems ghostwriting for someone else. There would be many people who would look down on you because you lack or do not create writing content that you own. But many people do not understand that you are happy just to be able to write and earn money from it.

There would be times where you would create writing that you own and showcase it online. However your reason is simple. You want to showcase the writing skills you have in the hopes of getting writing jobs to improve your freelancing career.

You could be working for a content mill or actively soliciting clients online. You may be working for a company in a contractual or part-time basis. If you are working for a content mill it would be wise to get your own clients to get better pay and working conditions.

After trying content mills as well as directly soliciting clients online I can definitely say that writing is the easy part. Finding paying clients is the hard part. You can work for content mills and you would not have to worry about marketing but they pay low.

You could solicit clients directly and they might pay you higher. However marketing takes time and many freelancers say that they do more marketing than actually doing writing. But many state that their lives got better especially the pay when they were able to find reliable clients.

So the best strategy would be to combine writing for content mills and doing direct client solicitations. Work for content mills for the arguably reliable but low pay they give. When you have found steady reliable clients of your own give them your most attention for the better pay they give.

3. The Specialist:

Your online writing is only one aspect of your career but it is nevertheless a major one. Your career instead revolves around a subject or a group of subjects which may or may not be related at all. Perhaps this is better explained with an example.

For example there are many motivational experts like Tony Robbins who have writings all over the internet. Their subjects are all about motivating you in life. They have online articles, blogs, books, videos and so on. All of these digital content involves thought where writing is a major part in bringing ideas to real life.

But these people do not only produce content online. They conduct events like conferences, seminars, live trainings and so on. But no matter what form their ideas took on their subjects are always the same: motivation.

If you are a specialist you are like these people in terms of your relationship with online writing or writing in general. For example in my website I concentrate on writing articles about generating income if you are an aspiring entrepreneur with limited funds.

Though I am happy with the website I also dream of one day producing e-books of the same content and even maybe going into freelance teaching if I ever get good enough. My content is mostly dedicated to the subjects I intend to get known in and nothing else.

If you intend to be a specialist then it is advisable to make your mind at the onset. It is but natural for anyone beginning in any field or career to be as broad as they can. This is in order to get as many customers as possible.

However sooner or later if you are lucky enough you would build a following. There would be a small part in the many articles or blogs that you are writing online that they want a consistent amount of while the rest of your blogs or articles go on unread.

This is where you create your readership. For example in my website though I write about many types of income generating ideas it has been my articles about generating an online income which is popular. I can only deduce that my readers are especially interested in this that is why I am giving more effort to write about such articles.

If you intend to be a specialist then one thing you need to develop is a reputation for expertise. This means that you must be knowledgeable as much as you can in the subjects you are writing about. That is why the specialist’s product is not actually their writing skills but their expertise. The more expertise you prove the more are your chances to earn.

4. Website Builder

For you your websites are your products itself. Your income model is tied in to your websites. You build many websites not because you are particularly interested about the subjects in your websites but about the income you would derive from them.

You would typically be the person who will outsource the writing on your website. This is to give you more time to manage your many websites. Writing takes time and a high ranking article can take an entire day and even several days to complete including the research. You simply do not have time for this.

You rather are more knowledgeable in the area of website monetization. This could be in the form of ads, affiliate marketing, direct advertising in your website and other digital products and services. You pay for articles on a cost analysis basis and in terms of Google article ranking status.

This is actually a thriving business model used today by many website owners. They are also the reason why so many content mills and writing job boards exist. For people like you blogs, articles and other digital writing content are more of a commodity. “The more the better” seems to be the strategy of many website owners who outsource their content.

It also does not help that there are search engines that rank articles higher based on such criteria as depth and volume. That is why website owners tend to use content mills and job boards with the strategy of getting as much content for as little cost as possible.

Though this business model thrives I have read online stories of website owners who suffered because of this strategy. I would hear stories of them getting a lot of page views in their websites then things would go downward because they started outsourcing their online writings.

They then would eventually return to writing their own articles and minimize the number of their websites. I am not trying to scare you into writing your own articles or blogs. Rather, you need to exercise quality control in your outsourcing such that the content you get from outsourcing is comparable to your own successful writings.

5. Writing Content Creator

You create your own writing content and hope to sell it to online content publishing companies. There are many of these companies online. For example if you wanted to sell your articles online you can for example Google the search keywords “where to submit an article for publication” or “submit articles online and get paid.”

Your writing content can be anything. You can write articles, essays, poetry, short stories of any kind and so on. It is important to note however that instead of freelancing and arguably working for a company you get to choose what you want to write about.

This is a big plus. Think about the benefits: You are not bored with the writing process because you are writing what interests you. Also, instead of looking for clients and waiting for writing jobs to come up you have a ready client. All you have to do is submit your writings to the online publishing company and wait to get acknowledged and paid.

But there is a problem. In fact there are quite a few. For example:
1. You are competing with other writers and competition is fierce.

2. These online publishing companies are very selective because of the high volume of submissions they get. It can take months before they even reply to you as to whether or not your submission has been accepted or rejected. Most also state that they do not reply at all.

3. The pay can be low almost the equivalent of working for a content mill.

4. There have been some reports online about online publishing houses “borrowing” the writings of submitters without adequately compensating them.

The obvious advantage of writing for online content publishers is that you get prestige if ever you are published. This could be a tremendous boost in your career as a writer. This could be the opportunity you need to increase your writing network contact list.

6. Story Content Creator

Unlike other forms of writing which could be articles, blogs, essays and so on you instead write stories. You would likely be familiar with many story writing online platforms like Wattpad and may even write for them.

One of the more difficult writing content to monetize online. Even advertisers which are the mainstay of online income would find it hard to associate their products to your content. That is why many writers who create this kind of writing content tend to stay away from the advertising business income model.

You would likely be the person who would monetize by using an e-commerce platform to sell for example their books. These might be either e-books, audiobooks, printed books, a combination or all of these.

What sets you apart from the specialist is that although you may specialize in a certain subject like horror or romance or anything else you only intend to sell your writing.

This why most of your efforts online is about selling your book. You might have a blog, a podcast, a video and so on but they are all geared to selling your story books. You might be writing for someone else on the side but your online persona is that you are an author. Arguably you want to be known as an “author” rather than a “writer”.

There are even entire books and novels being put online not as e-books and audiobooks. This is a growing trend as books are morphing from printed books, then e-books, then audiobooks, to entire website contents.

Conclusion

Whatever online writing career you want it is important that you fashion your online writing presence the same way you want to be perceived.

For example if you want to market your writing services you should concentrate in creating a strong portfolio as well as displaying messages that you are available for writing jobs.

If you wanted to be known for your writing products then you ideally should not only have plenty of free samples of your work but also a robust e-commerce store of your writing products. It is important however that you communicate your products and services to your clients clearly.