I'm Just Sharing

Back at the beginning of April, I wrote a post titled I’ll Write Articles For You – For A Price. It was my introduction into the world of writing for others and getting paid for it; makes sense, eh? I thought I’d give an update on how things are going in what is kind of a career move.

It started out slowly, which also makes sense. Luckily, one of my article packages was kind of popular, so I did make some money off that. The other one still sits there without anyone even thinking about buying it, but that’s okay. That’s what experimentation is all about.

Meanwhile, I started getting some clients with my initial offer of how much I’d charge. I quickly learned that I deserved more than that, needed more than that, so I increased my rate. And I still got customers, which is telling. I haven’t written a single article that someone has come back and said it wasn’t written well. I did write a set of articles that the requester liked, but said they weren’t what he was looking for, which I then turned into a new anti-smoking website, but to date, that’s the only minor setback I’ve had.

I now have some weekly clients who request a certain number of articles a week. It’s not enough so that I can live only off that yet, but it’s a nice start, and luckily I make money in other ways so that what I’m making now isn’t all that bad. Sire has recommended that I go back and give Helium another try, and I just might do that when I have a little bit of free time. I actually enjoy writing, and if I can make more from it, all’s the better.

But I also have to admit that it’s not always so easy. What you find when people want you to write for them is one of two things. One, they’ll give you topics and let you write whatever you want to write about them; I just love that. Two, they look for certain keyword phrases and want you to work those phrases in as much as you can, even if it destroys the flow of the article. You sometimes feel silly doing it, but hey, it’s money.

However, even with the people who let you write on certain topics, some of the topics can be hard to think of week after week, especially if you’re writing multiples of them. One of my clients, for instance, wants 7 articles on this one topic each week, which means I have to be really creative in thinking about what to write. Luckily, as I’ve done a lot of research on the topic for him, and he was my first client, I’ve learned a lot about it, to the point where sometimes I don’t even have to do new research, I can just write something from memory. That’s an unexpected benefit of writing for one person all the time; too bad it’s not something I can use in my real life.

Finally, I did have one major caveat that I’ve stuck to, and will continue to stick to. I won’t write anything for someone else that’s a part of my core businesses. After all, if I do that, I’m just taking away from myself. This means I won’t write on SEO, or leadership or diversity or healthcare. I am writing on finance, though, which could be taking away from my finance blog, but that’s okay because it’s a wide field; always lots to write about there.

Writing is easy and hard at the same time. If I could only get someone to let me write about anything and everything, and get paid for it, I’d be a happy guy. Oh yeah, that’s what this blog is for; now to only get paid for it.