How To Build A Successful Writing Business In 6 Months Even If You Suck At Writing: The 4 Digital Writing Careers

My guidance after using writing to market for 3 years straight

So you started a newsletter.. Now what?

Right now you might have no idea how to convert your hobby into a full time income

Writing a newsletter does not automatically mean you will make a bunch of money

A newsletter can only get you so far

You love writing, and you hopefully love writing in your newsletter..

But you only have an idea as to how you’re going to go full time with this

If you don’t want to go full time, and you love it as a hobby, this doesn’t apply to you

But ideally, if you love writing, it would be amazing to make an income from it

Get up, slave away at your job, overcome your daily obstacles, get paid, repeat

This is your life right now

No, you can’t sit in your pajamas watching videos and writing for fun..

You have to go to work to pay the bills (unfortunately)

It will take you months or years to make consistent income from your writing..

Unless of course, you know about this simple solution

Most people don’t understand direct response marketing

In fact, they don’t understand marketing whatsoever

Most “salesman” are just scammers right?

WRONG

A good salesman provides a solution to a problem

This is the basis for the method I’m talking about

Do this, and you can see results in as little as 14 days

Yes, you can make money online using writing, in 14 days

Only if you do exactly what I tell you

But to make this happen, you need to put in the work

Ready to turn your hobby into a full time income?

Then let’s get started

Step 1 - Identify Your Writing Niche

Not everyone writes a newsletter

Not everyone writes social media posts

Not everyone writes sales pages..

But everyone writes.

Writing is the basis for anything you do online, and that’s why anyone can be a writer

Its not something that you learn, its something you’re doing on a daily basis already

To make money from your hobby, you need to know what you’d enjoy writing

If you enjoy writing articles, then your niche is newsletter articles

If you enjoy writing marketing proposals, then you might be more into sales pages

If you love education then maybe you’d prefer to write courses..

But when it comes down to it, thriving writing niches all fall into the same category

COPYWRITING

The word means to write words that sell ideas, products, or services

If your writing can do that, you can build a writing business with it

If Copywriting is the tree trunk, then what follows are the branches

These “branches” of digital writing, will be your vehicle

Look at the image below to get an idea of writing niches

Your writing niche needs to be based on your interests

There are very few people who are capable of continuously doing something they hate to make money, and those who are doing that, are not living an ideal life

So remember, choose wisely

• What can you write about every single day?

• What can you talk about every single day?

• What can you build every single day?

• What can you develop every single day?

That’s the direction you’re going in with your writing

Step 2 - Learn Your Writing Niche

Now that you’ve picked your writing niche, you need to know how to make money from it.. And no, its not by building a social media audience

Instead of building a social media audience, we’re going to borrow other people’s social media audiences

The biggest misconception about writing, is that you need to spend months building an audience for people to even care about your writing (that’s not true at all)

In 2022 I made $300 by ghostwriting a course (of which I only wrote like 25%)

That course has now driven over $2000 in revenue for my client

I seriously undercharged my client at the time, but it taught me something

If you don’t have an audience (I had about 100 followers at the time), borrow it (my client had 65,000 followers)

I charged him 50% of what it made on pre-release (before it was even available)

Now imagine I scaled this business model?

Imagine I used the same method to find more and more clients, write courses for them, I kept collecting cash payments, and I kept increasing prices

And I did all of this while basically being a nobody on social media

Your network is INCREDIBLY important

Let’s look at every writing avenue previously mentioned

2.1 Articles & Emails

“But Ian, I suck at writing emails/articles”

That matters very little

There’s 3 reasons people pay other people to write for them

1. To make sales

2. To outsource

3. To save time

Brownie points if you’re capable of telling interesting stories

When it comes to writing, the biggest issue will always be results.

How do you prove you know how to write, if the person doesn’t know you?

By being your own case study

If you want to write emails for someone, and charge say $300/mo (many such cases), you’d drastically increase your chances of landing a client if you already have your own newsletter with hundred to thousands of subscribers

So your job if you picked this writing niche, is to write every single day, network to grow, use social media to grow, and stay consistent

With enough time, you can start reaching out to people and telling them “Hey, I run a newsletter with 2500 subscribers, its generated over 50,000 views in the last 4 months, would you like me to write emails/articles for you?”

Now of course, the process is much more complicated than that, but you understand the idea behind it

If you can prove you’ve achieved similar results for yourself, you can use that as a case study to charge clients money

It works, and me + many other writers have done it before

Your most important asset will be your portfolio

If they want to work with you, you’re going to need recorded results or written content that proves your competence

This is exactly why Medium writers often get hired by publishing agencies

Their medium articles function as their portfolio, and they get recruited

You can charge based on conversions, views, or words

I help students in my program pull this off 3x as fast, than they would alone

If you’d like to join my digital writing program, just fill the form and I’ll be in contact → Fill in the form here

2.2 Social Media Posts

The “Algorithm”, is something every personal brand owner struggles with.

If you understand it, you can gain a bunch of attention

That attention can then be turned into revenue or community membership

This is exactly why “ghostwriters”, exist on X

But ghostwriters on X are not isolated

There are many people who do the same thing

And you know what they all have in common?

They write, and their clients pay them.

Digital writing is the basis for anything you do online, so naturally if someone doesn’t have the time or skills to do it, you can provide the solution, for a price

If you’re a social media post writer, there are two locations you can thrive (I’ve seen people making from $1,000-$30,000/mo doing this)

X (twitter), and Instagram

These two platforms LOVE outsourcing writing

Instagram posts are just written images.

First, build authority

If you want to write for other people, you need to be a walking example

Study the algorithm (it changes all the time), learn how to consistently get people to engage with your content, and grow your account

But that’s not all, you need to be capable of turning all those views into money

If you can’t do that, it will be difficult to get a paid client

That’s why you need to study the algorithm

Video editors do the same thing

Content → Views → Conversions → Revenue

If you’re working on X, you need to grow your account to 1000 followers at least

Then you can start helping people get to 1000 followers for a fee

The more you grow, the more you can justify charging (as long as you can turn those views into revenue)

People charge anywhere from $200/mo to $5000/mo for these services

If you’re doing it on Instagram, a niche based Instagram page is your best bet

Pick a niche, publish posts and short videos based on that niche every day (1-2 a day), grow your account, start offering promotions

Now that you’ve build your page, you can justify charging other people to build their page for them (one of the simplest business models I’ve ever seen, better than X)

There’s a full X social media masterclass in my Digital Writing Program, fill in the form to see if you’re a good fit here

2.3 Courses

Courses will always be in demand, and its one of the best ways to build passive income for personal brand owners.

Issue is, most personal brand owners lack the confidence, time, or the skills to write a good course → That’s where you come in

Learn how to write courses, then partner with someone by writing their course, then take a percentage of the sales, then turn it into a case study

In this case you’re technically a course ghostwriter, so you’ll be able to record the results, but not the client involved

That’s okay, you don’t need to mention them, just say you’re not allowed to disclose who it is, and mention the results

Let’s say you write a course for a guy with 100,000 followers

The course makes 150 sales at $25 per sale

That’s $3750 in revenue generated

Now the next time you encounter someone who needs help with their course, you can bring up this case study on what you’ve pulled off before

This takes trial and error, but if you do it consistently, you’ll eventually develop a formula for course writing that works 99% of the time

This allows you to increase prices, build a portfolio of results on course sales, and consistently charge clients either percentage based revenue share, or large once off payments (or both)

I know this works, because I’ve done it myself, but never scaled it

Want help pulling this off? Book a consultation with me here

2.4 Sales Pages

Ever bought a book? Guess what it’s hosted on, a sales page

A course? Sales page

An E-book? A sales page

A service? Sales Page

A consultation agency? Sales page

If you know how to write a sales page, you know how to drive revenue (provided your client has a good audience)

The funny part? Almost nobody knows how to write a good sales page

That’s why sales page copywriters are in such high demand

Your job in this writing niche, is to do the following:

1. Study everything high performing sales page related

2. Learn from master copywriters

3. Start writing sales pages

4. Write them for free

5. Get results for clients

6. Charge clients

7. Repeat

Writing a good sales page can change everything, and they can pay out as long as they are being used (provided you did a commission based revenue share agreement)

Learning how to write a good sales page will take a lot of practice, experimentation, and experience (its not going to happen overnight)

But once you pull it off, you can consistently work with clients to write their sales pages, then take your cut of the spoils

And that’s right, you’ll be writing the whole time

I’ve seen sales pages that went for $300, all the way to $10,000

The more money the sales page makes them, the more you can charge for it

In my digital writing program you get access to a sales page template that did over 6 figures in revenue for me, other marketers, and my peers combined

To see if you’re a good fit, fill in the form here

Step 3 - Build A Client Acquisition System

You won’t be getting any clients if you have no idea where to get them

The best way to find these people, is to look where they typically hang out

For instance, if you want to ghostwrite courses or write sales pages, then looking on gumroad is a great start

If you want to write emails or articles, then looking on medium, substack, and X (twitter), is a great way to find people who need your services

And of course, if you’re writing social media posts, find them on the platform you’re focusing on

To make it easier for you, I’ll share a few helpful data analytics I use in my client acquisition system

Analytic Number 1 - Volume

How many people are you reaching out to?

The more you reach out to, the more interested potential clients you will get, and the more clients you will have by the end of the month

But remember, you need to focus on quality

Don’t just jump into their DMs and pitch them

Build a genuine connection first, identify if you can solve their problem, offer to do so

Analytic Number 2 - Turn Around Time

How many messages do you send the person before they turn into a client, or reject you? The less the amount of messages you have to send, the better

To build a genuine connection you will need to send a few messages

So its important to find a balance between building a genuine connection, and the speed at which you send them down your client acquisition pipeline

Finding this balance is VITAL, because if you don’t do it, you will have a bunch of conversations you never finished by the time you are talking to new people

This results in clogged DMs and inboxes

If the average turn around time is 7 messages, and you’re having trouble getting there with 3 people who are maybe at 10 messages..

Then you need to improve your conversations skills in relation to what you’re selling

Get 99% of people at 7 messages

This means if they reject you, you already have a bunch of people in your pipeline who might turn into clients

This reminds me of something one of my mentors says

“Do not chase clients, if they say no, don’t fight for it, just move on”

The reason he says this is because you waste way too much time & energy trying to turn this one reluctant or uninterested person into a client..

When you could’ve already converted multiple clients who are easy to convert

Meaning if they say “No”, just find someone who will say yes (don’t chase them)

This keeps your ‘turn around time’ optimal, while ensuring you can consistently work with clients who WANT to work with you

These analytic data points are based on my “Simplified Selling Framework”

I used this framework to generate over $10,000 online, grab it here

Step 4 - Enjoy The Writing Process

If you followed the instructions in this article properly, you should enjoy writing, and instead of spending 10 months building a newsletter or social media audience..

You can use these methods to start getting paid for your writing, in 14 days from now

But remember, you still need to build that audience or newsletter..

Because in the long term it will bring in clients and customers for you, instead of you having to go find them yourself all the time

So yes, you can make a living as a writer, WITHOUT building a giant audience

PS: This article is a little bit late (sorry about that), been getting back into it after exams, so things have been a bit slow

Either way, I hope you enjoyed the article, and it taught you a few things you didn’t know about

Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

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Get access to the 7 step DM sales & networking framework I used to generate over $10,000 online, and build a 263,000 follower network on X (formerly twitter)

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IMPORTANT - Each of these courses are freely available in my digital writing program

Enjoy the rest of your day :), Ian