What to Know Before Becoming a Paid Content Writer

Visit any website or smartphone app today, and there’s a high chance you’ll be met with a homepage heavy on content. The introduction could be a brief explanation of the service, contact details, or helpful local information. The content on a landing page and throughout a site has two purposes. Firstly, it’s there to inform the reader. Secondly, it’s to help the page rank well at the most famous online search engines.

Where does that copy come from? All online copy is produced by a website content writer who is often in-house, working for the business or home base. Some sectors like banking or technology often employ full-time content writers reporting to head office. Sites covering sport or online gambling prefer to employ a large group of writers on a freelance contract, with every writer focusing on one sport.

Are you a talented writer with a passion for editing and have a long-lasting love affair with sport? May you find your perfect job isn’t as far-fetched as you once thought? In this article, you’ll find advice on how to become a paid content writer and a few things to be aware of when setting out on this exciting journey.

Find Your Position

What is your area of expertise, and which subjects do you feel most confident covering in your writing? It pays to find this out early. You should be looking for a niche or a gap in the market. You want your subject to be popular enough that content writing is in demand but not too popular that you must compete with thousands of other writers for work. The perfect situation is one where you are covering a subject, are an expert on it, and there won’t be a rush for every job posted.

Let’s say you love sport and writing about the NFL. That’s certainly popular enough, but there are millions of football fans worldwide, and many of them have experience writing content on games, usually on social media. Now. They aren’t all writers, of course, but they do have their opinions and don’t need you as a writer to tell them anything different. With tournaments like the NFL, NBA or NHL, the biggest publications, including websites, already have full-time, professional journalists with decades of experience. Breaking into the world of NFL journalism is difficult, to say the least.

You’ll give yourself a better chance of success by choosing an area that isn’t as mainstream as the sports mentioned. Let’s use esports as our example here. Esports is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, with hundreds of professional players competing for huge cash prizes. The sector is rapidly expanding, but there’s still a lack of quality esports writers out there. If you know your stuff, that could be your niche. Even if you weren’t fully up to speed on esports, you could commit to doing the research needed to become an expert.

Your niche doesn’t have to be esports. It can be anything, but our advice is to do your homework, find an area with a growing fanbase, and not a lot of professional writers chart its progress. You then have a golden opportunity to fill the void and create an income from writing website content.

Experience is Vital

To get a job writing content on your chosen subject, you will need experience, but to get the experience, you need to be writing, so how do you start. There are a couple of options open to you here. You could offer your services for free, writing content for a website on a voluntary business. This is a great way to get your talents noticed, but you must seek out a site with a strong fanbase, so your work gets maximum exposure.

Another good option is to launch your own website or blog. This shouldn’t cost too much, but any spend is worth it as your site will show you can write, edit, update, meet deadlines, and other important qualities of a writer. A blog is also a working CV, updated as often as you like. You are in complete control of the content, how the blog is promoted, and the readers.