How to Actually Get Paid to ‘Write What You Know’

Here’s the step-by-step you’ve been waiting for

It’s probably the number one writing rule. Except what does it actually mean? You know how to brush your teeth; could you get paid to write about that? Maybe, but there are plenty of caveats, the first of which is to write what you know… that very few other also people know.

That might be the key piece of the puzzle you’ve been missing, but there are several others. Let’s break it down in an easy step-by-step to get you from topic to title. Keep in mind we’re applying each step to one thing you can write for money, be it an article, non-fiction book, or even a novel.

Start with the broadest possible topic you know something about

Think travel, fashion, writing, politics, or finance. What’s your thing? Go big here, because you’re looking for a topic that millions of readers are interested in. You don’t have to be an expert in every aspect of the topic. General knowledge is your starting point.

Now narrow the focus to a smaller subset of your big topic to something you know more about than most people

I’m a travel writer, so that’s often my broad topic. I rarely get paid for writing about travel generalities because almost everyone knows something about the general idea of traveling. Nobody is interested in an article or a book titled “How to Travel.”

I have to first narrow the subject matter. The key here is to always be looking at the number of potential people interested in your smaller topic. If you narrow things too far, you’ve eliminated your audience, and thus your paycheck. My narrower travel topics include cruising and camping because I’ve done a lot of both and lots of people read about those two topics.

Tip: The smaller your writing project, the narrower your final subject matter is likely to be. Articles are designed to focus on details and specifics, books are designed to provide a bigger picture. So while you might write an article on a specific campground in Colorado, that hardly justifies an entire book.

Target your paycheck

It’s time to research your source of payment. Who exactly will pay you to write what you know about your new narrower topic? Pick a publication, platform, editor, or reader base and learn everything you can about them. Make it a habit to read what your target publishes on a regular basis. This applies even to self-publishing books on Amazon. Read what is published on your topic. Study the sales figures to determine what sells and what does not.

For online articles, check the number of reads, shares, likes, or comments, either on the stories themselves or on social media. The more you know about what gets published, the easier the next step will be.

Next, find a gap in coverage

There are thousands of writers out there writing about your slightly narrower subject matter. Some of them even know more than you do. That means step three is to isolate an information gap.

Think about this article you’re reading right now. How many times have other writers told you to “write what you know?” How many of them gave you a step-by-step plan for doing it? That’s the gap I identified and am attempting to fill.

And that, my friends, is one of my secret idea-generating weapons. I use popular title starters like “How to” to help me zero in on missing details in existing coverage. You don’t necessarily have to use the starters in your finished title, but they’re a great place to kick off your search for ideas.

Here’s a list of starters you can use:

How to…

The Missing Link to…

XX Things You Don’t Know About…

What Happens When You…

Blank vs blank (comparisons make wonderful gap fillers)

The Complete Guide to…

Every time you read something new in your targeted platforms, keep these starters in your mind. What has been left out of what you are reading? What aren’t you seeing in the list of recently published titles? What questions are being asked in the comment section?

Timeliness plays an important role in the creation of gaps. In early 2020, in the first days of the pandemic, I wrote a lot of articles about travel insurance and cruise line cancellation policies. This year, I have been busy filling gaps as those two things change again, often merely updating last year’s stories for more money from the original publication.

And don’t assume you have to know everything about the gap in order to fill it. Lean on your general knowledge coupled with strong research skills to write about almost anything in your sphere of knowledge.

Examples that apply these steps

The first two guidebooks I wrote were on rockhounding. I researched those while camping. After the two rockhounding books were completed it occurred to me how odd it was that such a popular outdoor travel guidebook publisher didn’t have any books on camping. They had books on fishing, hiking, climbing, and rockhounding. Camping was the gap nobody had covered. I filled it with a book that is now in its fourth edition, Camping Colorado. Funny thing was that my rockhounding books were about Texas and New Mexico, not Colorado. I knew a lot about camping and a lot about researching campgrounds. That qualified me to write the Colorado book.

The most successful travel bloggers I know are experts at filling information gaps by writing about less-than-glamorous destinations. I have one friend who is an expert on lots of things. She applies her travel expertise to the Southern states because few bloggers cover the charming tiny towns scattered throughout the South, but it’s a broad enough topic to give her millions of potential readers.

I’m a scuba diver. Millions of people dive around the globe, so that’s a good starting place for a topic. Hundreds of thousands of divers belong to the Diver’s Alert Network, which produces a glossy quarterly magazine covering destinations, underwater photography, plus diving health and welfare. I dive frequently at Bonaire. It’s a popular destination, so numerous other writers have published stories in the magazine about diving on Bonaire. A number of years ago, I was knocked down by a rogue wave and broke my shoulder while diving on Bonaire. No other writer had ever written about that specific topic. Bingo. It was a story only I could tell, neatly filling a coverage gap for the magazine and earning me a $400 paycheck.

Takeaways

Writing what you know sounds easy, and in reality, it is. What’s hard though, is getting paid to write what you know. To do that you have to work through several steps:

• First, take your broad knowledge into account.
• Narrow that knowledge to specific expertise you have but few others do while keeping your overall potential audience in mind.
• Research a particular means of getting paid for writing about that specific thing you know.
• Identify a gap in the existing coverage as it relates to both your expertise and your means of writing for money.

If you follow these four steps, your pitches to editors stand a better chance of being well-received, your books will find a more welcoming audience, and the paychecks can begin to flow in your direction.