6 Types Of Writing Gigs That Pay Beginner Writers The Most Right Now

№4 might surprise you

As a beginning writer you’ll be creating a lot of content for free to build your portfolio and reputation. That’s part of it. But it doesn’t mean you should expect to be earning peanuts for too long. Because you don’t have to.

There are a few types of writing that can earn you good money, not without work obviously, but pretty quickly.

These writing gigs are working a charm for many newbie writers right now:

Transcription jobs

It’s exactly what it says on the tin — you’re transcribing audio to written word.

When applying you’ll be asked to submit a trial piece of work, and then you’re good to go, usually working on a freelance basis. Typically you get paid per hour or per minute of completed audio, with the rates varying by website.

Good places to check out for starters are Speechpad, Transcribeme, or Castingwords.

One con: With the barrier to entry being quite low, competition to get the most viable jobs might be high. Get ready to put up a fight!

Ghostwriting

Ghostwriting is a much bigger deal than people think.

Many people still don’t realize books like Becoming or Will, or most of James Patterson’s books have been written by ghostwriters.

But awareness is growing, and ghostwriting is fast becoming the industry’s worst kept secret.

According to Reedsy, ghostwriters can earn anywhere between $2,000 and $70,000 flat fee per project.

This of course depends on experience, project size, and client. You probably aren’t going to land Will Smith anytime soon. But you could eventually be working with smaller to medium size influencers.

When you’re starting out, go after blog posts or short ebooks. Charge per word or per hour. This will make it easier to get your first few projects and build up a portfolio of writing samples to showcase.

If you’re an excellent writer with exceptional listening skills, and can easily make yourself walk in other people’s shoes to feel what they feel, then you could soon be living it large as a ghostwriter. Being a natural empath is a huge advantage.

The catch? You don’t own your work. It’s a one-time transaction. When you’re done, your client will put their name on it.

Most writers hate this.

(Ego?)

Which gives you more manouvering space. More opportunity to cash in where other writers opt to pass.

You also have a higher chance of getting ongoing work.

People like their content to be consistent. Once they like a ghostwriter, they won’t risk change. They’ll just keep sending more work your way.

Technical writing

If you have any kind of technical expertise, practical experience or a degree in a popular technical subject, leverage this by writing about it from an expert level.

As a technical writer, you write to communicate complex information clearly to people learning about it. You could be creating everyting from reference documents, instruction manuals or how-to guides, to graphics and brochure materials.

Demand for technical writing is steadily increasing — the job growth has been 6% since 2021. Currently on Upwork, technical writers can expect to get paid up to £30 per project hour (depending on depth of topic and experience).

So you might be a beginner writer, but you upgrade instantly to an expert level if you decide to leverage your technical knowledge by making it more accessible to everyday users, consumers, or other creators.

Editing

Hands down my favourite.

I’ve always had a bit of an eye for detail, to the point people used to send me things to proofread and spot typos (for free) all the time. The realization I could monetize this skill surprised me, but since finally doing so, it’s been a great resource of extra cash.

If you are similar, and have a better sense for grammar and flow than others, you’ll love this one too. At the moment you can charge anywhere between £15 — £30 per hour.

As an editor you review, correct and enhance someone else’s writing, fiction or non-fiction, but you’re also on lookout for overall engaging writing style and seamless flow.

Important: You need to be alert and sensitive to other people’s voices. You also need to be accepting of different tones in different types of people’s work. Opinion pieces, guides, essays, are all going to need their own unique treatment.

To do a good job, you have to learn to recognize where people’s personality is coming through, and enhance it. And to never, ever project anything of your own onto someone else’s piece.

Content writing

Demand for outstanding content writing has increased by 13% in the last 4 years. But it’s not just about articles or listicles; you could also be filling up start-up websites with content, write product portfolios and introductions, emails, or write story-style captions for influencers.

Websites currently accepting new writers:

• Listverse —fun listicles. You get paid $100 for each accepted listicle.
• Cracked — humor, personal experiences, pop culture. They pay up to $200 per article.
• Funds For Writers — writing career advice blog. Pays $50 per original piece and $15 per reprint.
• Reader’s Digest — will pay you $100 for sharing a personal story.
• Copyhackers — copywriting tips. They pay $300 — $1000 per accepted guest post.
• Eating Well — all about healthy eating. Pay rate is $1 per word.

Copywriting

You can expect your copywriting gigs to mainly include email marketing, social media marketing or general content marketing.

As it’s one of the most popular ways to make money writing, you could be facing stiff competition here. However, the effort is definitely worth it at the moment:

According to Smart Blogger, successful email marketing writers can currently earn up to $5,000 a month as an entry salary, creating email marketing campaigns for clients.

Your potential clients or employers will describe the job in fancy terms. Like ‘designing a journey for their customers’. In reality, you are writing a bunch of emails to send potential buyers down a funnel.

So the con is things can get quite salesy. If you hate that, you’ll hate email marketing.

But, if you’re lucky:

• The company might have an amazing background story, mission, or a great product that genuinely helps a lot of people.
• They might ask you to include a mini story in every email, which means you can actually feel (at least a little bit) like a writer.
• They might ask you to keep the emails friendly and real, so they blend in with the rest of the recipient’s inbox and don’t feel commercial. Which lets you keep at least some of your writer dignity.

To find clients as an email marketer, you need to have marketing experience, but there’s no official degree for email marketing specifically.

Usually a completed course and one or two successfully converting campaigns (these can be your own), will be enough to land your first couple of jobs and start building your portfolio.

Know your worth as a writer

Bottom line is, you’ll need to pitch and you’ll get some rejections.

But rejections don’t say anything about your actual worth as a writer (cough Elizabeth Gilbert, Agatha Christie, JK Rowling, cough).

Keep things realistic, keep your rates adequate to your current level, but at the same time know your worth. Keep applying and keep going.

Then raise your rates in correlation with the growth of your portfolio and experience. And where you can, collect reviews of your work to gain more tangible evidence your potential new clients can check out.

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