Do you have a penchant for the English language? MoneyMagpie Editor and financial expert Vicky Parry shares her tips for making money writing
If you love to write, it’s possible to make a career out of it.
There are so many ways to make money writing, some require more experience than others but all of them are achievable. You need to have a good grasp of grammar and be able to frame a great story for most of these – and if that sounds daunting, remember there are loads of free courses online to get you started.
Travel writing
For people who love to travel the world, this is a great way to make some money off it. You can find a niche, too – for example, some people like to travel on hand luggage only for months-long trips, while others specialise in going on cruises.
Travel magazines and websites are always looking for good stories and reviews. Travel writing isn’t just about visiting a place and writing about whether you liked the food, though. You can tell rich autobiographical stories that almost feel like fiction – and these can be entered into publishing prizes to earn even more money.
To get started, write up some sample articles of places you’ve recently been. Use these as a calling card portfolio to approach editors at travel magazines and websites to ask if they have freelance vacancies or opportunities. If you have a trip coming up, pitch your stories about that, too – perhaps ask journals if they want a guide to unusual things to do in the area, or similar.
Short stories
You can make money writing short stories, but it’s not going to be a regular income. The great thing is that you can, however, write them much faster than a novel! So, you can have a large portfolio of stories that, if you can’t publish elsewhere, you can publish in your own short story anthology online.
Short stories are popular in some magazines, be they women’s weekly or monthly magazines or literary magazines that showcase writing. There are also lots of short story competitions to enter every month, although make sure you weigh up the cost of entry versus the prize fund. Sometimes, the chance of winning is too low or the entry cost too high to make it worthwhile. Three places to check for short story contest details are the Writers and Artists website, Writing Magazine online, and MSLexia.
Blogging and email newsletters
Yes, the days of blogging are not over! They’re just different to how blogs used to be circa 2005. These days, you can use platforms like Medium to reach a wide audience and write about any topic you fancy. You can also go the traditional route and run your own website, making money from adverts and sponsored posts, but this can be an expensive way to get started.
You may also have heard of Substack, which is like an email newsletter service that lets you write blogs and send them in emails to your subscribers. With this, you can offer free blogs as well as restrict some content to paid subscribers only. It takes some work to build an online platform on social media to drive newsletter sign ups, but can be very lucrative.
Copywriting
Copywriting is any wording that you see on advertisements, or on company websites, or even as scripts for commercials. Wherever there is something to sell, you can bet a copywriter is involved along the way.
There are so many different forms of copywriting it can be tricky to know where to start. If you have professional experience in a particular industry, that’s one of the most common ways to branch out – contact your previous colleagues and clients, as a starting point.
You can also create your own portfolio by writing sample pieces. When you have a portfolio together, you can use it to attract clients – some people use websites like Fiverr to get started, while others do the online equivalent of pavement pounding, contacting companies individually. Copywriting can also be an in-house job, so you could have some luck looking on job websites for salaried roles.
Training AI
Writers are scared of AI, but it’s already here. If you can’t beat them, join them: become a language model trainer. This is when writers proficient in a language teach AI models how to ‘speak’ naturally, feeding them phrases and playing a part in machine learning.
If you’ve never done this before, look for an online course to become familiar with the strategies and techniques. Look on job websites for AI language trainer as the search term. These roles are often freelance, so you can do them in your spare time.
It should go without saying that training AI as a writer does not make it OK to use AI in other forms of writing, like for novels or scripts – if only because there are complex copyright issues around doing this.
Self-publishing spicy romance
Thanks to the rise of BookTok, there is a huge demand for romance novels – particularly ‘romantasy’ or romance fantasy. These are quite difficult to be published traditionally, but it’s easy to set yourself up as an author online to self publish on platofrms like Amazon and Apple Books.
Writing spicy romance isn’t for everyone, even though there are different levels of ‘spice’ to write for. But the books tend to be shorter, even more like novellas, and if you enlist in Kindle Unlimited you can take advantage of being paid per page read.
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