I Paid Half My Bills Last Week Writing Simple Articles — Here’s How
The simple way I make a living doing what I love
I made between $1,000–$3,000 last week writing simple articles.
That probably sounds too good to be true. I get it. I wouldn’t believe it either if it wasn’t actually happening to me.
In 2020, I quit my full-time 9 to 5 job for freelancing. I applied for writing contract positions like crazy. Most of my applications were ignored or denied, but I managed to network my way into a sweet deal with a local company with a national reach.
Here’s how I did it.
It Really Is Who You Know
After my divorce a few years ago, I made it a goal to meet new people, to gather my tribe.
As any 40-year-old divorcee knows, making new friends as an adult is not easy. You can’t just walk up to any stranger at the playground and ask if they want to be your friend.
And, if you do, they will call the cops.
So I downloaded the “Meet Up” app where you can find groups of people categorized by activities or interests.
That’s how I met my current group of friends. One of my friends just happens to work for a large healthcare company.
How It Happened (All the Tea)
As I made my risky transition to freelancing, I shared the news with all of my family and friends. I didn’t think much of it until I got a message one day from my friend, Jen.
She said her company had an opening for a contract writer focused on medical articles.
Delighted by her call, I told her I was definitely interested but had no medical background. I did mention that I’d written plenty about healthcare (mostly emotional, mental, and behavioral) and that I thought my skill set would transfer to medical — along with a healthy amount of research.
She agreed, so we set up a video orientation call to go over the details.
During the video call, it became very clear that I could absolutely do the job. Even better, the work paid very well. Bonus!
What I Actually Do To Earn Money (It’s Ridiculously Easy)
I like to say that I’m not a doctor but I play one on the internet.
It’s funny and surprisingly accurate. I don’t actually play a doctor, but I do write medical articles about everything from heart issues to urinary surgical procedures.
All of my articles are thoroughly researched, accurate, and written in simple language a non-expert can understand.
Most of the time, I receive a monthly project of around 10–12 articles, clustered by medical topic. So, for one month I write a batch of articles about cancer. Another month, I might write about medical procedures.
What’s mindblowing to me is how easy the company makes my job.
They use a third-party service for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which helps them rank higher in Google search. This third-party company sends me a detailed outline of each article.
The outline typically includes:
- All the keywords
- All the subheadings
- What to say in each subheading
- Exact words and phrases to include in each subheading
- How many sentences or paragraphs to write under each subheading (usually only 1–2 sentences or paragraphs along with a bulleted list)
- Competitive examples from other websites
The only way they could make it any easier is to give me all the words and tell me to simply copy and paste them into the article.
The entire process is strikingly simple, and I’m happy to do it. But anyone with any talent at all for simple writing could do it, too. My 15-year old could do it. My 7-year old could probably do it with voice-to-text.
What Does This Mean For You?
This is all great for me, but what does it mean for you? It means that easy opportunities to make good money exist.
It means that many big companies use contract writers. These big companies probably also use third-party SEO experts. Freelancing gigs tend to pay more because companies don’t need to pay for benefits.
Like, way more!
If you want to, you can find an opportunity like mine. A simple, easy, well-paid opportunity.
It just requires a little effort upfront, some networking, and the ability to write simple, grammatically correct sentences.
That’s literally all it takes.
Final Thoughts
From these contracts alone, I’ve probably made close to $20,000 since I started in 2020.
I make approximately $300 per article I write. Multiply that by 10 or 12 articles, and you get a hefty sum of up to $3,600 per project. I usually finish a project in one week.
If I get two projects in one month (which happened in April), then I double that number. There have been times that I paid all my monthly bills with one week of work.
I recently started using some new tools that make my job even easier:
These links go to my website where you can find out more about those two tools.
Check out my top 5 most recommended tools for writing (not an affiliate link).
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