You can choose to become a content writer as a career or a side hustle to make money by learning the skill via free online resources. The major skills needed are researching, writing, proofreading, and editing to pursue content writing as a profession.
Content is a major staple for any marketing strategy. Content in any form helps businesses reach their ultimate destination.
Content writing is a skill that solves major burning problems in marketing and sales. Therefore the career of a content writer has become one of the most popular careers in 2022.
What Are the Qualities of a God Writer?
How to Improve Your Writing Speed and Write Faster?
How to Improve Your Writing Skills?
Steps to Become a Content Writer
There are many things that you need to do to become an effective and profitable content writer. There are majorly 8-steps to learn and monetize your writing skills. You can go through every step to understand the crucks of the content writing business in 2022.
The process of becoming a content writer may take a good 3-4 months to get started and make money. There might be days when you have no clients and no revenue in the initial months.
But your consistent efforts make it effective to gain confidence and further build your content writing business from any corner of the world. Here are the steps that you may follow to become a content writer:
1- Brush Up Your Basic Writing Skills
The first step to starting any business is to learn and implement the skills and understand the basics. To become a content writer, first, you have to sharpen your writing skill. You can learn content writing from free online resources or take paid courses or you can do self-learning as well.
You must practice and implement writing skills by writing about your interest and improving yourself at the craft. Even if you are a beginner with zero knowledge about Content writing, you can still manage to be a content writer with some time and effort.
There is no rule to write for hours together to be a content writer. You can consistently write for 15-20 minutes every day and improve your skills.
Initially, when you are confused about what topic to choose, you can write about your interests, day-to-day activities, favorite holiday, etc. You can write about literally anything and everything
2- Grammar
The next step is to brush up on your grammar knowledge. You do not have to be a master in it, but if you know the basic grammar, the quality of the content will be better. To become an effective content writer, grammar is one of the essential things.
You can consider watching tutorials related to do’s and don’ts of grammar rules in content writing and implement the same to improve your skills. In case you still find it extremely difficult to fix your grammatical errors, there are free tools like Grammarly, thesaurus, Hemingway, etc.
It helps you eliminate grammatical errors in your content. You can also opt for premium packages depending on the requirements.
Also, if you are highly interested in improving your grammar, you can learn via books, online resources, etc., and practice the exercises regularly. But this task is not a compulsory one.
3- Choose a Niche
A niche refers to a particular industry, field, or topic of your interest. It is highly important to decide your Niche before following the further steps. You can brainstorm and prepare a list of topics that interest you and would like to write about those topics.
Consider your previous experiences, likes, knowledge, and interests while preparing this list. For example, if you are a person who enjoys traveling and collecting things from every vacation to preserve them as a memory.
You can pick travel as your niche and share your experiences and hacks. Likewise, you can pick 2-3 niches in which you enjoy writing.
4- Pick the Type of Content Writing
Newbies content writers tend to ignore the various types of writing and later suffer to create samples and fetch clients. Therefore understanding the different types of content writing is a vital step.
Content writing includes both long-form and short-form writing. These are a few types of content writing:
- Blogs or Article writing
- Social media content writing
- Academic writing
- Technical writing
- Landing page or sales page writing
- White papers writing, etc
Here are a few things to consider before coming to a conclusion. You should take your decision after analyzing all if and buts.
- Firstly, you must perform basic research on these types before choosing them.
- Consider your skills, experience, and knowledge related to the different types.
- Be clear on whether you enjoy writing long-form content or short-form.
- Know the tone, style, and type of business that the type of writing demands.
5- Create Samples or Portfolio
This step is crucial to showcase your skills in front of your potential clients. As a beginner, you must prepare 2-3 pieces of sample content of your niche and type of writing. A portfolio and sample are one of the most important things for a content writer.
You do not need testimonials to start. Add an introduction about yourself and a few samples works with your contact details in your Basic portfolio.
You can work with 2-3 clients for free, taking them as your beta client, which means you provide free services in exchange for testimonials or feedback. The testimonials help you elevate your portfolio and gain trust amongst future clients.
6- Price Structure
As a content writer, You need to perform market research about the standard pricing rates and charge according to your choice of niche. Pricing depends on your skills, knowledge about the niche, expertise, and experience in content writing.
There are majorly three types by which you can charge your clients:
Price Per Word: You can charge based on the number of words you write for your clients. You can fix this based on your niche and experience.
For example,
500 Words * 1 Rupee Per Word = 500 Rupees
Hourly Basis: In this case, you track the total number of hours you work on a particular task or project and charge accordingly.
For example,
5 Hours * 300 Rupees Per Hour = 1500 Rupees
Project Basis: Experienced content writers consider charging on a project basis. You can fix a price based on projects and charge based on it.
7- Set Up Social Media
It is highly significant to optimize your professional social media handles. If you do not have a separate account for your writing business, it is highly recommended to create and optimize it.
You can create content and share your wins, testimonials, experiences, and learning with your audience. It helps you build a personal brand. Inbound or outbound clients There are broadly two ways to get clients online.
The first one is inbound clients, which means clients will directly approach you via your social media platform or referrals etc. And the next type, the outbound clients, are the ones you will be approaching for work along with your portfolio and results.
Based on your convenience and perspectives towards your experience you can choose the right method. You can also consider a mixture of both types of clients.
8- Take Testimonials and Feedback
Once you start working with your clients, always take feedback on your quality, style, and tone of writing. This paves the way for improvement.
Also, ask them for a testimonial after you serve them or while serving them if it’s a long-term project. This is a major add-on to your portfolio for your potential clients to trust your work and initiate investing their money in you.
Pro Tips For Content Writers
Update Your Portfolio: The portfolio is the most important aspect while you pitch your clients and you must choose the best projects and case studies of yours while presenting to your clients. And you must update it every 2-3 months.
Optimize one platform: Instead of choosing multiple platforms and making it tough for you to manage everything, you can choose any one platform which fits best for you.
Have a Checklist for Everything: Know what is your next move, and prepare checklists of your tasks and goals of the day. It makes your job simpler while working with multiple clients.
Read and Write Every Day: You get better with any skill only if you put in consistent efforts. Therefore cultivate a habit of reading and writing every day to improve your writing skills.
Pick a High-Paying Niche: Once you are good at what you do you must choose high-paying niches such as health, wealth, fintech, etc. So that you can increase your revenue with the same efforts.
Be Confident: Your communication skills and body language are necessary while pitching and converting potential clients into paying clients. Be confident with your skills and knowledge while communicating with them
Conclusion
To summarise, content writing is one of the most happening careers to choose from in 2022. When combined with the right mix of consistency, skills, samples, and testimonials, this career can lead to a full-fledged money-making business option.
Therefore identify your skill sets and start your content writing journey. Choose your niche and create a portfolio to present to your potential clients and fix the standard pricing according to the market.
How to Become an Expert in Your Niche? 11 Tips
