How I Made a Six Figure Income Writing

This article is for one purpose only, helping those who want to make a living by writing.

While it's commendable that some say they want to write for the love of writing, deep down we all secretly want it to be the way we make a living as well.

For those who want to make a living writing, you really have to think differently than you have been, as it is not usually done in the way it is regurgitated on the web by writers who, in my opinion, really aren't making a living, based on what they're saying.

Some of these appear to do research where they find someone saying something like "write about what you love." I'm going to challenge that later in the article as it relates to making money. Remember, this is an article about making a living writing, not about writing purely for personal satisfaction. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but it won't pay the bills or put bread on the table, if you're honest about it.

An accident at my place of work resulted in me having to make a decision on whether to come back or not at the highly physical job. I decided it wasn't worth the risk, and so was born my writing career, which was launched in December 2005, and has been the way I have made my living since that time, bringing in income in the six figures.

In this article I'll show you the simple steps I took to generate the income, and what the means of payment were.

I'll get into it a little later in the article, but one thing that must be understood is writing is far more diverse than most people think of, and entails a variety of methods and means to attract those seeking specific information.

That is one of the keys to successfully making a living writing, and those that aren't aware of that, will struggle to generate enough income to do what they really want to; which is to write.

I do want to take a moment to say that in reality, I had been published in a newsletter and magazine years ago, but at the time, while enjoying the work and experience, it wasn't in my mind to become a writer, although interestingly, there was a time when I was one step away from starting a magazine of my own.

The point is writing wasn't foreign to me, but that had been about 20 years before. It only points to the fact there was something in me that was trying to get out, but it wasn't the time for it.

When looking at writing, it's completely different to me than to most people, who look at it from a very narrow perspective; which is from a creative perspective, in their view.

Now all writing is creative, but most think of it as some type of self expression, which is why they get prickly when someone offers some type of constructive criticism, because it becomes a personal attack in their eyes, as it's considered an extension of themselves. Most of you know what I mean here.

Let me give you an example of how I think of writing in a different way. Most of us know what the Drudge Report is. You wouldn't think of Matt Drudge as a writer would you? Most think of him as an aggregator. If that's the case, why can't anyone compete with his success. Many have unsuccessfully tried.

While part of his strength is his choice of topics and his research, as for the writing part, I see his strength in his ability to write catchy headlines that draw people in.

You may not think of that as writing, but it certainly is, although of a much different type.

Another form of writing is that of copy writing. If you work on this particular craft, and hone your skills to a significant level, you've literally got it made, as you can command good income from clients.

It also can help you in your own writing endeavors in helping you to promote your own work or business; whether online or offline.

Think of knowing how to write killer copy in long or short bursts, which can attract potential customers on a place like Craigslist, or others places like it.

Again, this is writing, but not what most people think of when contemplating doing it.

Now the reason I brought up these two different ways of writing is only to get you thinking outside the box, as far as writing for a living goes.

There are an almost endless amount of ways to write, many of them things you know about, but don't associate with being a writer.

For example, writing ...:

News Stories

Data

Product Reviews

"How to" Articles

Headlines

Analysis

Commentary

You get the idea. We could go on with a number of elements. All of these have strengths and weaknesses, and must be understood in how you must adapt your writing to each one, and to others not mentioned.

Of those mentioned above, I've written on all of them, and in the case of product reviews, been paid directly by those seeking reviews. I was given leeway by all those hiring me for that purpose to be honest in my assessment.

Do you see how writing takes on a different feel when looking at it from this point of view? That's what I want it to do so you can move beyond conventional thinking.

Writing on a niche topic and then blending it with one of the above-mentioned, or other areas to write about, is one of the keys to generating meaningful revenue from your writing.

Let's take a brief breather and look at the most oft repeated bit of advice for beginning writers, and that is to "write about what you love."

As it pertains to making a living writing, it's absolutely not true. Here's why.

Let's say what you love is a extremely popular topic with a very large audience, filled with writers competing for the attention of the masses.

No matter how much you love the topic you're writing on, for the most part, you're not going to be successful in making a living, as mainstream media will have anything popular covered. There are exceptions to this, but overall, especially when you're starting out or wanting to take the next step forward, you're fighting a losing battle.

That's why niche topics are far more realistic to those seeking financial success as a writer.

You see, the problem is thousands of writers will love the same thing, creating a barrier to entry that is difficult to overcome.

Having said that, the strength and reason for writing about what you love is when you get discouraged, you will hang in there while you develop your craft.

The answer to how to make a living writing is to fall in love with writing itself, not in the topic or segment you're attracted to.

That's not to say what you love can't be what you write about, just that it should be in a niche topic rather than a mainstream, highly popular one. If not, you'll be setting yourself up for failure.

If you love writing, then you can adapt yourself to a variety of areas which will provide you a living, and still enjoy what you're doing. Assuming you refuse to do that, it'll significantly shrink your chances of being successful.

In my experience, to be successful financially in writing, it seems you must be as prolific as you are able to be to be. Once you do the heavy lifting in the beginning, it becomes easier as you go along.

For me, I've literally written several million words since December 2005. I can say that because I was hired to write for a number of companies which allowed me to write a large number of articles, but with specific parameters as to how long they must be. I just multiply the number of articles written by the average, and it comes to be millions of words.

This isn't as hard as it sounds at first, seeing the articles averaged about 700 words each, and I wrote about 8 or 9 a day (for one company). Multiply that by 300 days, and you can see how quickly that can add up.

There are also other ways to generate some major copy, and that's when you write about data. Everyone draws from the same source or sources, depending on what type of data you're gathering, and rewrite it in their own words.

In one of my current blogs, I've posted over 1,000 times a month, with each one being at least a 100 words or more. And that's just on one of my blogs.

Don't get discouraged hearing these numbers. I didn't start off this way, I learned as I went.

My point is, being prolific doesn't always mean the same thing to the same writer. It depends upon the content of what you're writing.

The way I've made my money is through writing contract work for others, while at the same time starting my own blogs and writing content with ads placed against them.

Most of the ads are Google Adsense ads, but there is also Amazon.com products and Kontera, which together can add up to significant income. And it has for me.

What I like about this two-pronged approach, is you can have a foundational income you can count on, while building up your own writing business.

The foundation is the deal for contract writing work. At one point I was writing for three different companies in order to cover myself in case one made a decision to cut back on the number of articles they wanted.

That allowed me time to look for a replacement when that happened; and it always did.

From there, I worked hard on my own blogs in order to build them up to become money producers.

For those of don't want to or aren't able to have your own website or blog built for you, don't be in despair. I've made all my money (from 2005 onwards), from a free Google blogger blog.

Don't believe those that say everything must look extremely "professional." It's simply not true.

I know of a well-known syndicated columnist and author of numerous books who uses a Google Blogger blog for all his online work. He wasn't known when he started the blog, it grew along with him. There are numerous others I've come across as well.

Don't get me wrong, there are certain areas of the writing business that will eventually demand to be taken to a visually appealing level, but it's not necessary, and I'm proof of it, as I've made thousands and thousands of dollars using the free Blogger platform, so I can concentrate on building out my writing business and not on the technical aspects of the business.

That leads me to this: Writing is not just writing, writing is a business. If you don't have that mentality, you won't be successful financially. Period!

Putting words down for someone else to read, in all the multiple ways mentioned in this article isn't enough; you must also know, as far as the Internet goes, how to write for search engines as well.

No matter what happens in the future, one thing that won't change is people will continue to use words to search for content they're interested in. Keep that in mind for any type of writing you do.

One thing that may surprise some of you, and contrary to seemingly growing conventional wisdom, is I have never used a social network to drive traffic to any of my blogs either. To me they're a giant time-sucking waste of time that are highly overrated as far as helping you make a living.

I know someone will write about some type of exception to this, but with all the contact I have with successful online business people, they confirm as well there is very little social networks add to online business success.

You can make a good living writing, but you must move out of that self-expression thing if you really want to be successful financially.

The artistic thing must be tempered with business reality. The two can be merged, but the key in my experience, as mentioned, is to love writing in all its forms, rather than falling in love with a specific topic.

Many topics don't generate much income, and if you refuse to move off of that topic because someone has advised you to write about what you love, you'll have to be content with personal satisfaction, as you'll never be able to make a living writing if you do.

This isn't to say you can't come back to writing what you're passionate about, I'm saying learn how to write to make a living first, hone your craft, and when you've succeeded, branch out into the areas you want to personally write about.