Before You Start Writing for Money Online

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Making a living writing for money online is one of the happiest decisions I’ve made in my entire life, and it could be one of yours, too. No more bitchy bosses who resembles constipated drill sergeants on the warpath. No more starchy business suits and power lunches with quota-driven executives. You can write anywhere, anytime in any position wearing any clothes. Only your husband or your cat (or dog) would raise an eyebrow (or two) at the odd choices and noises you make while working.

But although it’s fulfilling work, working for money online is not for wimps, ninnies, or slackers. Here are three important questions to ask before shucking your day job and diving headlong into the online writing life:

1. Do you have the thick skin needed to deal with chainsaw-wielding strangers who will slice and dice your work?

We writers are very sensitive with our writing. Even now, after 15 years of writing for different buyers, I still feel the sting of insecurity whenever a client rejects or returns my work for revision. When someone who hasn’t experienced the creative uncertainties and pain of writing dissed our work, some of us are either insulted or hurt and go through the seven phases of grief (no kidding!) before we can even begin to deal with it.

Because of the anonymity and physical distance of the online world, clients can easily critique or reject written work without the delicate niceties of face-to-face exchanges. Clients can be brutally direct in their comments. You’ll have to learn how to take these without flinching. You know what they say about practice making perfect: after a time, you can be casual about rejections and revisions without losing your stride.

2. Do you have the dogged determination to keep on improving not only your craft but also yourself?

Of course, your wordsmithing savvy is still tops in snagging good-paying writing projects online but having other skills that add to your value as a provider will help define you as one of the Net’s top writers. For example, a blogger who can customize WordPress blogs, optimize posts for search engines, do some linkbuilding, and steer through social media networks would be more bang for the buck to a client than another blogger who knows jack about these things.

Adding new skills doesn’t mean you have to pay to learn. If you know where to look, there are a lot of free resources on the Internet (like eHow and other related pages) to learn from. Set a goal—say, learning the basics of SEO in the next three months—and start with small chunks at a time so you won’t be overwhelmed. Come up with a personal curriculum so you’ll be able to track your progress.

3. Can you stick to a schedule and have the strength of will to ignore distractions in order to meet deadlines?

It’s so easy to slack off. There’s always the TV, the dishes, dinner, your kids, and a thousand and one other things to distract you. There are times for everything. Make sure you can stick to schedules because frankly honey, slacking off means dollars lost and pissed-off clients who’ll never hire you ever again (word of mouth can be hell if you’re not careful).

One danger in the online writing life, as I’ve discovered, is the body’s fondness for the horizontal position (sleep is, after all, the body’s natural state). It takes a lot of discipline to wake up at a set time to work when there are no guys from human resources to breathe down your neck about bundy clocks.

One simple thing you can do immediately to define your work and personal schedules is to note down your waking and sleeping hours, the times you are at your most brilliant wordsmith self, how long it takes you to write a standard 500-word article (including research, first draft, and final edits), and the chores and errands that you need to do and when. Once you have these data, you can then set your working days and hours.

Writing for money online can be a very profitable venture, but for those who lack the discipline, the determination, and the deliberation, it could also be dangerous.

I’d appreciate it if you’d share with us what you believe are the other important traits or considerations a writer who makes a living writing online must have or take into account in order to earn well.

All the best,

PS:
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