You don’t have to do what people tell you.

When I started writing online I was told to spend 3 years building an audience. Then I could start making money.

I decided to break the rules.

If you want to make money, being a great writer isn’t enough. You need to learn the business of writing.

I discovered this accidentally.

I’d been on Twitter (X) for 4 months when I received a surprising message from a brand I follow. They’d noticed my content and asked me to ghostwrite for them.

I’ve never heard of ghostwriting (when you write for someone else).

But I gave it a go.

Earning 5x my normal wage transformed my view of what is possible as a writer.

Once you make your first $1 you gain confidence and realise your stuff has value.

Anyone can make money writing.

You just need to learn how.

I’m exploring 5 ways to make money as a writer. Why not try some of them too?

5 ways to make money

1. Ghostwriting

Loads of businesses are desperate to get noticed online. And would love to pay someone to craft compelling content for them.

The problem is most writers hang out online with other writers. So businesses never see them.

So here’s how to get paid to write online content for others.

Pick a topic you know something about (eg. health, property, food).

Pick a platform (X or Linkedin) and follow 20 accounts in this niche. Post quality comments. Then start posting your own content in this niche. Once accounts start engaging with you. Send a DM. Build a relationship. Offer free work. Then offer paid work.

Showcase your skills. You’ll stand out and be offered work.

2. Recommend courses that have helped you

I didn’t want to taint my writing with an affiliate

(where you promote someone's product and get paid).

Kieran Drew’s High Impacting Writing transformed my writing on X. Boosting my growth from 50-630 in a few months. And I was recommending it to everyone.

Then I discovered Kieran was offering £90 for each affiliate sale so I decided to sign up.

I now promote his course in emails and on X. But only because I found it genuinely helpful. I’ve grown on Medium because of a course too. So I’ve approached them to become an affiliate.

It’s making money whilst being helpful.

3. Coaching service

As my audience has grown I’ve received requests for writing advice. People have found my feedback useful. So I set up The Writing Clinic to give personal writing advice.

What started as a free service has become something I can charge for.

Providing your services for free is a powerful strategy. It helps you:

• test the market

• hone your skills

• build your confidence

• gain client reviews

The Writing Clinic is a low-risk experiment. All it took was to set up a landing page and then promote it.

Look for low-risk, low-cost experiments you can try.

4. Digital Products

I’ve written 103 Medium articles this year.

Valuable content I own. Creators on X are always impressed by Medium writers because of the depth of content we generate. I was asked:

Why don’t you bundle up 10 articles and sell them on Gumroad as a digital product?

The honest answer was I didn’t value my content that much. But my ghostwriting gig changed all that.

So I’ve started designing digital products (email series, video-based, and ebooks). Using the content I already have makes this easy. Article comments are customer feedback. They tell you what is helpful and what other questions you need to answer.

The costs of offering a digital product are low. Gumroad is the perfect platform for this. My first product is already available. It took 15 minutes to set up.

Put your content into an accessible format and then sell it.

5. Explosive earnings on Medium

I made $0 in my first 3 months on Medium.

$20–26 for each of the next 4 months.

Then this happened:

$310 in one month!

Don’t start a blog. Start on Medium.

• It’ll develop your skills

• Generate value content you can reuse (for X, Linkedin and Digitial Products)

• And earn you money

Hopefully, these ideas inspire you. Don’t get attached to the $$$ results. Experiment. Learn. Have fun.

And if one of them works?

Celebrate — because you deserve it for taking a small risk

I’d love to know how you are making money from writing (reply to this email)

thanks,
Derek

What I’ve been reading…Discipline is Destiny.

because I need some inspiration to be more disciplined.