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Learn to write well. You can make 1k-1.5k/month starting next month if you can author good blog posts for businesses. Writing content, like coding, is somethin

Learn to write well. You can make 1k-1.5k/month starting next month if you can author good blog posts for businesses. Writing content, like coding, is something where the time investment cannot be "hacked." For a 1200 word blog post someone has to sit at the computer and actually write the 1200 words. That takes time. In many cases there is no content writer on staff and someone has to do the work. I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there. My first professional writing gig was for a German industrial paint company entering the US market. I earned $50 for a 600 word post and wrote them 3 posts per day. Related: I nearly failed chemistry in high school and know nothing about paint. Until about a year ago I had been blogging for others for close to a decade. 4 or 5 years ago I surmised that I probably had someone in the neighborhood of 4 million words out there on the internet, mostly applying to subjects I have no training in. I just like to write and people will pay for that. I've easily made $400-$1000/month writing posts for businesses as I have a beer in the evening and my wife makes dinner. Businesses of all types will pay between $500 and $1000 for a well written, well researched blog post between 800 and 2000 words. Can you create a technical whitepaper or even an eBook/lead magnet with citations and some science in it? That STARTS at $2000. That means companies (like mine) that have those opps are more than happy to farm them out to someone else for a few hundred bucks. You can easily command a dime per word if you are reliable and write with quality. In fact, I don't have $1k of budget for you/anyone right now but I'd be glad to pay a dime a word starting Monday for someone to start pumping out all the posts for my business that I've been meaning to write but - wait for it -simply cannot find the time to prioritize the work. THe content creation/professional blogging space is still full of opportunity and based on the short post you have here it looks like your English is just fine. "So where do I find the work?" Craigslist - tons of opps, tons of competition Fiverr Blogmutt and similar Content co-op sites Cold approach - send me an email I'll send you the exact instructions for doing this. Good luck.

reroute1 6y ago
Interested to know who is paying you $1k for a blog post...
- goatherders 6y ago
  I'm not telling you specifically who, obviously, but we have 3 clients that order a post from us about once a month for at least $1,000. The posts typically are: - 2000 to 2500 words - FAST (48 hour) turnaround - ready to be published without more than a simple read through - voice consistent with other posts that we may not have written for them - well cited or referenced The clients are - b2b environment selling into the enterprise - companies that generate b/w 10M and 100M in business - tech companies that have a disproportionally small digital marketing team thus the need to outsource. Example, in early March we wrote a series of 3 blogs posts about security challenges for transforming your organization to WFH. $2500 for a total of ~6000 words, ordered Monday morning and delivered Wednesday night.
  - elvecinodeabajo 6y ago
    I can't believe it. Literally.
    - goatherders 6y ago
      Ok. I dont really have anything to gain by lying.
      - jagannathtech 6y ago
        You are just herding goats amirite? jk ;)
      - reroute1 6y ago
        your website looks like a joke and your "company" sounds awful
        goatherders 6y ago
        Sorry, the stacks of money on my desk blocked me from seeing your comment. Scoreboard, loser.
yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
> I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there. I'd love to see some kind of evidence to support this claim.
- libertine 6y ago
  It's called Ghost Writing. If it's 90% or more or less, I have no idea, but it's quite common. From blog articles to books.
  - yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
    I’m familiar with ghost writing, but its mere existence does not support the claim that 90% of C-suite blog posts are ghost written.
    - goatherders 6y ago
      I was ghost writing blogs for almost a decade. Almost everything I wrote was published under c suite names. 90% is my random guess. If the actual exact number is important to you then discount the 90%. I hsvent actually done a study.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
I’d also like to know how to make money with writing if you wouldn’t mind going into the details
- goatherders 6y ago
  Someone emailed me a couple hours ago off this thread and I'll share here what I replied with. I've removed client names because, well, go get your own clients. -- Yessir, happy to share. Here are some pieces we have written in the last couple of years that commanded at least $500 per. I will trust your HN'honor to try not to poach or anything, and it wouldn't work anyway. (redacted) Many people (including many who post on HN) think "That doesn't seem so special. I could do that." But that misses the point. As I mentioned in the post it takes TIME to write something of quality that people want to read. The internet is full of bad blog posts so companies are looking for quality writing that has a point of view. If you imagine that a proper blog post would take approx 4 hours to research, draft, edit, review then the company/customer has to decide whether to allocate a $60k/year full time employee to writing it (which would be approx $120 of salary) or they can farm it out and put that employee on something with more measurable ROI like PPC management. Organizations know they need blog posts and those that (1) have a good revenue footprint and (2) sell to the enterprise view blogs differently: it isn't always about getting a new lead and SEO. It's also about VALIDATING a decision a prospect is already thinking of making when they come to the site. The piece for (redacted) above wasn't about getting new leads or SEO juice or shares. It was specifically written to help them close a deal with a large TV studio that wanted to make sure their web partner was led by honest enthusiasts and not some anonymous ownership group. We turned it around in 2 days so they could get it in front of the prospective client before a decision on the RFP was made. We wrote that post while they were in a competitive situation against a much larger firm (Leo Burnett), a firm that has amazing work didn't know how to display the same "human" personality. (Our client) won the 6 figure deal. The money they paid us for the post was customer acquisition cost no different than having taken the prospect to a fancy dinner. If you want a roadmap: Find companies b/w 10 and 50M in revenue Find those that are publishing blog posts irregularly or not at all. Irregular means they are doing it themselves without much structure. Not at all means they aren't doing it at all. If they are posting on the same day each week or every other week then someone has beaten you to the punch; move on. Reach out with a HIGHLY customized email message and offer to write one post at no charge. This is your "offer they can't refuse." The post is their's to use however they like even if they don't pay you. Ask, however, that if they do like it that they spend 15 minutes on a call so you can hear their ideas if they had unlimited blogging capacity and then share how you might be the person to fill that need. From there we usually get people into a blog services contract of $1,000/month for a post b/w 700 and 1000 words 4x a month. If they want us to do the content map, post more, come up with the post ideas, fast turnaround, etc. then the price goes up. We have a number of $2,500/month contracts that include us doing the calendar along with the subjects/strategy, 4x blog posts, and 1x longform (eBook or whitepaper). I farm the work out for approx 40% of what we charge the client. It's not a very difficult sell. Good luck.

reroute1 6y ago

Interested to know who is paying you $1k for a blog post...

goatherders 6y ago
I'm not telling you specifically who, obviously, but we have 3 clients that order a post from us about once a month for at least $1,000. The posts typically are: - 2000 to 2500 words - FAST (48 hour) turnaround - ready to be published without more than a simple read through - voice consistent with other posts that we may not have written for them - well cited or referenced The clients are - b2b environment selling into the enterprise - companies that generate b/w 10M and 100M in business - tech companies that have a disproportionally small digital marketing team thus the need to outsource. Example, in early March we wrote a series of 3 blogs posts about security challenges for transforming your organization to WFH. $2500 for a total of ~6000 words, ordered Monday morning and delivered Wednesday night.
- elvecinodeabajo 6y ago
  I can't believe it. Literally.
  - goatherders 6y ago
    Ok. I dont really have anything to gain by lying.
    - jagannathtech 6y ago
      You are just herding goats amirite? jk ;)
    - reroute1 6y ago
      your website looks like a joke and your "company" sounds awful
      - goatherders 6y ago
        Sorry, the stacks of money on my desk blocked me from seeing your comment. Scoreboard, loser.

yakshaving_jgt 6y ago

> I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there. I'd love to see some kind of evidence to support this claim.

libertine 6y ago
It's called Ghost Writing. If it's 90% or more or less, I have no idea, but it's quite common. From blog articles to books.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  I’m familiar with ghost writing, but its mere existence does not support the claim that 90% of C-suite blog posts are ghost written.
  - goatherders 6y ago
    I was ghost writing blogs for almost a decade. Almost everything I wrote was published under c suite names. 90% is my random guess. If the actual exact number is important to you then discount the 90%. I hsvent actually done a study.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago

I’d also like to know how to make money with writing if you wouldn’t mind going into the details

goatherders 6y ago
Someone emailed me a couple hours ago off this thread and I'll share here what I replied with. I've removed client names because, well, go get your own clients. -- Yessir, happy to share. Here are some pieces we have written in the last couple of years that commanded at least $500 per. I will trust your HN'honor to try not to poach or anything, and it wouldn't work anyway. (redacted) Many people (including many who post on HN) think "That doesn't seem so special. I could do that." But that misses the point. As I mentioned in the post it takes TIME to write something of quality that people want to read. The internet is full of bad blog posts so companies are looking for quality writing that has a point of view. If you imagine that a proper blog post would take approx 4 hours to research, draft, edit, review then the company/customer has to decide whether to allocate a $60k/year full time employee to writing it (which would be approx $120 of salary) or they can farm it out and put that employee on something with more measurable ROI like PPC management. Organizations know they need blog posts and those that (1) have a good revenue footprint and (2) sell to the enterprise view blogs differently: it isn't always about getting a new lead and SEO. It's also about VALIDATING a decision a prospect is already thinking of making when they come to the site. The piece for (redacted) above wasn't about getting new leads or SEO juice or shares. It was specifically written to help them close a deal with a large TV studio that wanted to make sure their web partner was led by honest enthusiasts and not some anonymous ownership group. We turned it around in 2 days so they could get it in front of the prospective client before a decision on the RFP was made. We wrote that post while they were in a competitive situation against a much larger firm (Leo Burnett), a firm that has amazing work didn't know how to display the same "human" personality. (Our client) won the 6 figure deal. The money they paid us for the post was customer acquisition cost no different than having taken the prospect to a fancy dinner. If you want a roadmap: Find companies b/w 10 and 50M in revenue Find those that are publishing blog posts irregularly or not at all. Irregular means they are doing it themselves without much structure. Not at all means they aren't doing it at all. If they are posting on the same day each week or every other week then someone has beaten you to the punch; move on. Reach out with a HIGHLY customized email message and offer to write one post at no charge. This is your "offer they can't refuse." The post is their's to use however they like even if they don't pay you. Ask, however, that if they do like it that they spend 15 minutes on a call so you can hear their ideas if they had unlimited blogging capacity and then share how you might be the person to fill that need. From there we usually get people into a blog services contract of $1,000/month for a post b/w 700 and 1000 words 4x a month. If they want us to do the content map, post more, come up with the post ideas, fast turnaround, etc. then the price goes up. We have a number of $2,500/month contracts that include us doing the calendar along with the subjects/strategy, 4x blog posts, and 1x longform (eBook or whitepaper). I farm the work out for approx 40% of what we charge the client. It's not a very difficult sell. Good luck.