Some people find it hard to believe that you can earn over £1,000 a month writing from home but I am here to tell you that it’s more than possible.
In this article I list 3 ways that a person can earn £1,000 or more a month with writing.
The great thing about writing is that you do not need any specific qualifications to do this. Nor do you need to be a brilliant writer. As long as you can write well and have a good command of the English language – or whatever your mother tongue is – you can earn a lot of money as a writer.
Anything you need to master to improve your writing skills can be learned. The type of writing required is easy-to-read simple writing as it is going to be online and seen by thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people.
This is going to be the general population at large, and what you must understand about the people who often frequent the internet is that they have a basic level of reading ability.
That isn’t to say that people are stupid, they are not, but on average, the people who use the internet the most are Mr and Mrs average.
They are everyday people, who have everyday conversations using simple everyday language. To connect with these people regularly and successfully you must write using simple easy-to-understand everyday language.
This makes writing a lot easier to do on your part. So please do not fear that you cannot make a living from being a freelance writer… because you really can.
So let’s get right into the 3 different ways that you can make £1,000 plus a month as a freelance writer.
1 – Write Sales Letters And Sales Copy.
This is a seriously profitable form of writing. If you can write in a way which generates sales, gets people to sign up for a newsletter or take action in any other way, then you can earn a lot of money.
If what you write generates a result, a result which a client requires, you can charge more for your services than most writers. If you can deliver results by the bucket load, you can very much set your own price and ask for what you want.
Copywriters can be paid thousands to write long form sales letters like this one One Letter From Retirement. They are also paid thousands to write webinar and video scripts, sales copy as part of a sales funnel and a series of emails.
One email can be worth a couple of hundred pounds if written as part of a sequence. Writing an email sequence for a promotion can earn a writer a lot of money.
As an example, the internet marketer Anik Singal generated over $1 million in affiliate commissions sending out 18 emails over a 12 day period. He has a large list and was promoting a high ticket item. This wasn’t his item, it was an affiliate product and so all he had to do was send the emails to his list.
I believe Anik wrote the emails himself as he is a very good copywriter in his own right, but imagine if you as a writer were approached by a company or individual who had a large list and wanted a series of emails to be written promoting a high priced item, how much do you think that company would be willing to spend if they knew that they could generate a cool million in sales from that email promotion?
How much do you think they would be willing to hand over to you if they knew that it would be your writing which could generate the amount of money they were hoping for?
Copywriters can charge thousands to write one sales letter. Sometimes they can charge upto £30,000 for a sales letter which can take as little as a day or two to write.
‘The most successful letter I wrote…and one of the shortest at two pages of A4…has pulled in over £5 Million so far, and it’s still coming in. I wrote that one way back in 1998 – in an afternoon!’ – John Harrison, Streetwise Publications
Sometimes they can charge a whole lot more…
‘I am paid from $50,000.00 to $150,000.00 to as much as $2 million plus royalties for such a campaign… – Dan Kennedy, author of Renegade Millionaire
Dan Kennedy is a legendary copywriter who can command huge fees for his writing. Often charging a writing fee and then a percentage of the sales thereafter. He has been credited for earning over $1 million for writing one sales letter for a client.
When writing a sales letter with a royalty payment based on sales, it means that the copywriter is partly responsible for the ongoing success of the sales and marketing copy. They can make alterations and try new variations of sales copy over time. Their success is related to the overall success of the sales letter and so they actively work with the client to make the sales letter to be as effective as possible.
What most people do not realise is that sales letters follow a template. They have been written the same way for over a century using tried and tested principles proven to work. Once you have written one sales letter, you can easily write another. You change the wording but keep the flow and the elements all in the same place. It is like painting with numbers, only this time you are using words.
It is incredibly easy, and the fantastic thing is that people pay you a premium to do it for them… when, unbeknown to them, they could quite easily do it themselves.
Being able to write incredibly effective sales letters is a premium skill. You can be paid a lot more than the average writer, work less and have more free time to play with. That is what I love about it.
To learn how to write your own incredibly profitable sales letters or simply learn how to master the enormously profitable skill of being able to write sales letters for clients check out the copywriting home study course by Steven Gregson and Streetwise Publications here: One Letter From Retirement.
2 – Become An Article Writer
This too can be a highly profitable form of writing, but it is never going to be a patch on copywriting. Article writers generally get paid a lot less than those who write sales letters, however, all is not lost. There are different types of articles and some require the very same copywriting methods which are used in sales letters.
There are two different types of articles:
- Information Based Articles. These articles are written for simple website traffic. The idea is that they people come to a website, read the article and either leave, or move onto other articles on the website. The main focus of these kinds of articles are to generate advertising revenue from the adverts which are dotted in and around the article on the webpage.
They may ask for readers to join a newsletter but on the whole, they just want to get as many people onto their website and to filter through to the other articles on the website to generate more page views which in turn generates more advertising impressions generating more advertising revenue.
- Results Focused Articles. These are different to the information based articles as they are designed to take the reader through a journey and subtly push them into taking action. The action may be to buy a product or it could be to join an email list where they will be subjected to a series of emails as part of a follow up sequence where they will again be taken on a journey and nudged in the direction of making a purchase.
The idea behind this kind of article is simply to have the reader do something. It is a results focused form of writing, and if you can deliver the results clients want, then again, you can be paid well for it. There are some writers who can command several hundred pounds per article. Those articles will be written using specific keyword phrases drawing people in from the search engines, exciting them and enticing them to opt-in to an email list and then filtering them through a series of emails promoting specific products.
Either way, these types of articles are written to generate a sale and a profit for the client either upfront or further down the line. The more astute reader, would have realised that this too is a results focused article.
Imagine charging an average £300 per article and landing 4 clients who all contract you to write one article a month for their website.That is just 4 articles for £1,200. Those 4 articles could be written over one week giving you more time to enjoy your life, or more time to write more articles.
Articles can be between 1,000 and 3,000 words on average. This article has roughly 2,500 words. Probably be more by the time I have given it a final edit. And it has taken me no longer than 3 hours to put together.
What if you were asked to write two articles a month by all 4 clients. You have now doubled your income to £2,400 per month and still have time spare to enjoy your life. Even if you only charge £200 per article, that is still an incredible little earner. But believe me when I tell you that there are people who charge a lot more per article.
You might be thinking, ‘who the hell is going to pay £300 or more for one article which is going to go on a website?’ and that is the root of the problem which most writers have to wrestle with. You see, you are thinking that £300 or more is expensive for an article, but it is relative. If you are a website owner who has very little traffic and little to no income coming in from your website, then yes, £300 is expensive for an article. But, if you are a 6 or 7 figure a year business whose website has a ton of traffic each day and is generating thousands of pounds each month via product sales and affiliate commissions, then no, £300 for an article which will generate a few thousand pounds extra in sales is not expensive.
Let’s not forget that an article online, is online for many years. That one article could still be generating thousands of direct and indirect sales each year, many years after it was initially paid for. That £300 article is no longer just an article, it is an investment. It is a mini online salesperson who is busy working hard making sales 24 hours of each day, every day of the year.
So yes, there are people who will pay £300 or more per article. You just need to find the right companies and people.
3 – Ghostwriter Writing Books For Other People.
This can be a very lucrative business. I am not going to say that it is easy, there is quite a lot of work involved writing books for people as they can require tens of thousands of words.
A book may be 50-80,000 words long and you could be paid £500 for that whereas in the other previous examples, a 2,000 word article could net you £300 or more and a 5-10,000 word sales letter could net you somewhere between £5,000 and… well… a million or two if you are in Dan Kennedy’s league.
However, working as a ghost writer can be a lot of fun if you love building worlds with words and incredibly rewarding because you are paid well for having fun. It is possible to write two or three books a month. It can be challenging and quite a lot of work but 2 books at around 50,000 words should take you two weeks. I personally would charge no less than £100 for 10,000 words. That is cheap really.
A lot of people will think that writing a book for £500 or more is expensive, and again, this is relative. For someone who is tentatively sticking their toes into the world of book publishing and has never generated a profit before, paying £500 for something which they do not know whether it will sell many copies or not, then yes, £500 is expensive.
But for someone who publishes books regularly, has a large email list, a busy website, money to spend on advertising and generates several thousand pounds each month from their library of already published books, £500 is nothing to them other than an investment and a business expense. One which they will believe is a good investment.
Again, you must remember, the price also reflects not just the writing done, but the potential of long term profits. A badly written book will not sell many copies. A well written book will and if you deliver a quality book which your client knows has the potential to sell a lot of copies over many years, then they will – or should at least – be happy to pay you well for your work.
Think about the popularity of Dan Brown, Roald Dahl, JK Rowling etc, their books will still be selling for many years to come. You don’t need to be at their level to sell a lorry load of books over the years. Your books in the right hands could be making sales many years after it was written.
Two books per month at £500 will earn you a nice £1,000 per month. There is no reason why you cannot charge more and find those clients who will happily pay you more if you can deliver the quality they expect. It is possible that you may find clients who will happily pay you £1,000 per book. As mentioned before, if they know how to sell that book, it has the potential to make a lot of money over many years.
Ok, so there you have it, they are just 3 of the many ways you can generate £1,000 or more per month as a freelance writer. In my opinion, they are 3 of the best. Each style has its benefits but copywriting has to be the number one way to make £1,000 or more per month as a writer.
Once you have learned the formula and understand the time and tested proven principles, you can write sales letters which people will pay you thousands for, which take very little time to actually write compared to other writing styles.
To learn how to write seriously profitable sales letters of your own or for paying clients check out the One Letter From Retirement home study course HERE: