It requires creativity, not only in your prose but during the job hunt, to find how you can turn your writing skills into a career. Writers, like salesmen, are needed everywhere and must do well in playing the chameleon. They are sometimes required to market themselves as a Swiss army knife of the written word in order to get their foot in the door.
Here are a couple suggestions where you can take your talents into a full-blown career:
-
Blogging
Blogging is the top non-traditional way to start making income as a writer. This field is so flexible because of your ability to write and make money on your own blog (usually from advertisements, affiliate marketing, selling your e-books and more). There are opportunities to find clients blogs to write for as well, such as the ProBlogger Job Board. The topic of your personal blog is up to you and there are many businesses out there that provide a professional service in whatever your passion may be, and it’s more than likely that their blog could need some fresh new content on a regular basis.
-
Copywriter
The highest paid and most sought after traditional writing professionals are copywriters. Keep in mind that this is writing that has the highest level of focus on marketing the product or service and getting your reader to take action. It’s greatly sales focused and therefore requires high levels of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sophistication. Copywriters should not only be great at getting readers to take an intended action, but they should also be skilled at making that page or article rank high in the search engines. Although there are copywriting courses out there that can be taken to receive certifications for this and may increase your income, you can also use free resources on the Internet to improve your copywriting skills, such as Copyblogger.
-
Website Content Writer
You’re probably thinking what makes this different from a blogger? A guest blogger is usually focused on one post or article at a time, maybe even a batch of articles here and there, but a content writer has a suitcase full of many outfits that they may have to wear ranging from researcher, to editor, to designer, to SEO expert on a daily basis. These jacks-of-all-trades are in high demand because of their range of skill sets.
-
Freelance Writer
The beauty of freelance writing is the number of jobs, tasks and duties you can find. You can range anywhere from technical writing, academic writing, product reviews, website reviews, ghostwriting e-books, press releases, news writers, and to jobs solely based on editing. Freelancing will never run dry of opportunities. You can look for job opportunities starting at freelance platforms, such as Odesk and FreelanceWriting. There are also a variety of writing services that regularly hire freelancers.
The fierce competition of freelancing will increase your ability to market and promote yourself as a professional. Embrace it.
-
Journalist
Journalism is a field whose end is nowhere in sight. Magazines and newspapers, although having been highly challenged by their virtual successors, will more than likely never fade out of print. Although finding work as a journalist in the print medium may be limited, it is virtually limitless online. You can find a lot of work at JournalismJobs.com. If you haven’t graduated from college with a Journalism degree, you should have the focus on reporting the news as it is and training yourself to write only facts, devoid of your opinion.
-
Article Writers
Content was king for a while, but since the Internet has been flooded with it, great or premium content now sits on the throne as king and doesn’t appear to be dethroned any time soon. Article writers are afforded the luxury of being solely focused on an area of expertise that they have and can provide instant and continuous value. For example, you can find work as a contributing writer to place like About.com. After you learn the principles of article writing to organically attract readers, the rest is providing the premium thought provoking content on a consistent basis.
-
Editor
Proofreading and copyediting are respectable career opportunities that afford you the chance to develop an income. Your skill set should be high levels of understanding and proficiency of grammar, sentence structure, and a background of the subject that you’re editing. Having experience as a writer when editing for more creative based writing is also important as well. You’ll want to take online proofreading and editing tests to see if you are really ready to operate in this role.
-
Author
Becoming a full time author will require a lot of you. If you wish to do it part-time you can generate a passive income by writing a book that sells and getting it in platforms such as Amazon, Kobo, eBooks, etc. This will require some knowledge and know-how of business, as well as formatting skills to format your eBook properly for it to be flawless on the platforms you want to have retail it for you.
-
Literary Agent
Literary Agent performs the duties of getting the author’s writing in front of the publishers. You would spend a lot of your time first reading through tons of manuscripts to find the diamonds in the rough that you think is worthy of being published. The majority of literary agent’s income comes from their commissions, which can range anywhere from 5% to 25%. You can find more about the career here. One way to build a client base is to target younger authors who show promise in their writing.
-
Writing Consultant
Are you a successful author, journalist, or freelance writer? You may be able to squeeze consulting in your schedule. It’s as simple as making yourself available to other writers who are trying to follow in your footsteps and need help and are willing to pay to get it. Either if you consult on a personal, one to one, basis or market yourself to universities or writing organizations across the nation to speak publicly, this can be another means of generating extra income just by simply sharing your expertise with others. You can look through Writer’s Digest Consultants Center and click into the different consultants pages to get a sense of what they individually charge.
-
Greeting Card Writer
Ever wondered how much the writers get paid to come up with those short clips of writing in those special cards you’ve ever received or purchased for someone else? Okay, maybe not, but it definitely should be given thought. Although each company has their own guidelines you must follow to give yourself a chance at getting a card with a slogan of your own published, there is a viable market out there for you to find a fit that’s best for you. In the mentioned link, the lowest price per slogan is $25 and the highest is $300 per slogan. Are you getting any slogan ideas now?
-
Video Game Writer
Video game writers are involved in the video game development process by writing plots, settings, character development, storyboards and scripts. Generally you break into this field by first being involved in the gaming community, writing reviews of games and other game based articles. You then will be required to network heavily to break into the industry. If you’re not involved in the gaming industry but are in the fantasy, science fiction genres or have done any scriptwriting you have an advantage in this field. Here’s a list of job opportunities to get you started.
-
Joke Writer
If you’re more of the humorous type then you should consider being a comedy/joke writer. There are tons of vacancies on job boards for comedy writers. Your primary duty would be to write pages of jokes and sell them through joke writing services or sell them as yourself and reap 100% of the profit.
-
Letter Writer
Letter Writing is similar to greeting card writers, but much more difficult to actually find a client with a traditional Google search. You’ll have to get creative to find businesses that are in need of letter writers. You should check a local business directory and make calls to inquire if they are in need of any professional letter writing services. Keep in mind these letters will primarily be business related and you should have business writing experience.
-
Speech Writer
Speech writing is a high paying profession that garners high paying salaries to experienced, professionals as you can find here. You can crack into this field with a bachelors degree, but really what’s going to set you apart is if you have a graduate level education, work in a political or government sphere and have years of experience. If you don’t have these things, don’t count yourself out. Find clients who need speeches and start mastering your craft and building your portfolio just as a freelance writer would.
Creativity can solve any problem. Use your creative writing mind in your business and career life and find problems for people that you can offer a solution to with your writing. Be committed to your success as a writer, take action, and the path will unfold before you.