A Complete Beginner’s Guide on How to Earn by Writing Articles

This is for you if you have never earned a penny in your life from writing — but you want to.

Source: Playground AI. Created by Alexander Voss. I liked this ambidextrous woman because she looks industrious, and she’s writing!

I still remember being inundated with those ads that promise you it’s “easy” to figure out how to earn by writing articles.

I didn’t believe them then, and you shouldn’t believe them now, either. It’s not easy to earn money online by writing, certainly not as a beginner.

But:

• It’s easier for writers to earn money than it used to be, because there are lots of places to apply and pitch
• Competition probably isn’t as stiff as you imagine — there are lots of crappy “writers” out there just trying to earn a quick buck

With that in mind, with this article I want to talk about how I earn from article writing. I’ll cover my three streams of income from article-writing:

• For clients — freelance clients or agencies who hire me for ghostwriting or SEO articles
• For platforms — Scripted, Textbroker, etc
• For my blogs — on Medium and ZulieWrites

I’ll also cover tips on how to set up your freelance writing portfolio, how to pitch, mistakes to avoid, and how to scale up your article writing to make a living.

Step 1: Start posting articles online

The best way to start making money writing is by posting your content online. Write something and press that publish button.

So many people get hung up on the early stages of freelance writing — trying to find the most profitable freelance writing niche; developing a backlog of work; setting up social media profiles.

Don’t fall into that trap. It’s thinly-veiled procrastination.

Write something. Post it online.

This is going to accomplish three things:

• Get you into the writing habit
• Improve your writing skill
• Create your initial portfolio

I recommend sticking to a routine of writing one blog post per week. This is manageable enough that you…