You’ve got two options for earning more money as a freelance content writer:
- Find lots of people to pay you a little bit of money.
- Find a handful of people to pay you a lot of money.
Writing and selling digital projects? With a great product and a strong email list, strategy 1 is your best approach. But as a content writer who makes money once per assignment, it’s time to befriend strategy 2.
And it’s much easier said than done. Simply put:
If you want higher paying clients, find clients with more money to spend.
You’ve heard this before. Quality over quantity is what most freelance writers want, but how do you make yourself attractive to these unicorn clients?
Whether you have 5 months or 5 years of experience, here’s how you get to over $10,000 a month as a freelance content writer.
Focus On Lucrative Topics and Earn a Share of Multi-Billion Dollar Industries
Unless you’re a celebrity or an influencer with a massive audience, it’s challenging to make money in over-saturated niches like fashion, food, and travel.
But if you’re curious, love learning, and want to make money writing, it’s time to turn to the multi-billion dollar B2B industries where marketers need reliable writers to execute on their content marketing strategy.
Cloud computing
Gartner predicts public cloud computing revenue will hit $266.4 billion USD this year — and that was before the pandemic. A basic understanding of cloud computing throws a massive door open to opportunities across several industries.
As companies shift more workloads (aka stuff they do using computers) into the cloud, they’ll face new challenges and needs.
If you understand the basics, you can help any company offering a cloud-based solution explain their offering to B2B customers.
Financial Technology
A financial institution’s value proposition is managing money as efficiently and securely as possible. So if any industry’s interested in figuring out how to use technology to be faster and smarter, its banks.
Plus, they don’t have much of a choice.
They’ve got nimble, whip smart financial technology (“fintech”) companies nipping at their heels.
These companies have memorized bank customers’ pain points, eat and breathe technology, and have no qualms about wooing legacy customers.
And this industry of restless, creative fintechs will be worth $309.98 billion USD by 2022. Imagine earning a fraction of a percent of that.
All of this equals great news for content writers. If you understand the interplay of finance, compliance, technology, and customer service, you can help financial institutions and financial technology (“fintech”) startups explain their solution to B2B customers, B2C customers, regulators, and more.
Feel a bit intimidated? Don’t be. If you’re interested in finance, jump into this fascinating niche with both feet.
Contrary to popular belief, a preference for words over numbers is not a barrier to entry. One of the MOs of the financial industry is intimidating people with complicated words so they can hide simple math that doesn’t add up.
If you love figuring out what things mean and explaining them in simple terms, you’ll make a killing in this niche.
Internet of Things
Imagine a bridge sending a text to an engineer’s phone saying, “Listen, friend. I’m struggling. I’m giving you a two-year heads up that you’ve gotta help me out.”
That is a very simplistic way of describing what the Internet of Things can accomplish.
An engineer knows ahead of time whether a key piece of infrastructure is failing.
A factory owner gets a heads up before a critical part fails, allowing him to do some predictive maintenance, and avoid costly downtime.
Sounds valuable, right? You better believe it. The Internet of Things industry will reach USD $9.96 billion USD by 2025.
And there are several subtopics like IoT in healthcare, IoT in manufacturing, and IoT cybersecurity that provide ample opportunities for top freelancers.
Cloud computing, financial technology, and the internet of things are just a few examples. Other areas include supply chain automation, artificial intelligence, DevOps (development and IT operations), 5G, and more.
Clients in these niches are happy to pay hundreds of dollars for a single blog post and thousands of dollars for white papers and e-books.
You Don’t Need To Be A Subject Matter Expert — And Clients Don’t Expect You To Be
If you’ve ever read the technology section of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Financial Times, you’ve probably noticed something: The writers are rarely engineers, developers, and project managers.
They’re journalists.
Smart journalists, yes, but not tech subject matter experts. They are curious people who ask a lot of questions and communicate ideas clearly to readers.
This is exactly what a Marketing Director with a generous freelance budget wants. They want a freelance writer who:
Asks a lot of questions
Your client won’t view this as a waste of time. They’ll breathe a sigh of relief. Promise.
Thanks to your curiosity and smart questions, they don’t have to spend two hours putting together a FAQ for you.
They can have a free flowing conversation with someone who’s taken the time to conduct preliminary research and prepare questions.
Brings a storyteller’s flair
B2B marketers may be positioning a technical product, but that doesn’t mean they’re looking for inaccessible, jargon-filled content.
The decision maker in their target company may be someone who is knowledgable about the product, but has a business or finance background instead of an engineering or development background.
They may rely on a deputy to vet the more technical side of things (and that’s later in the buyer’s journey anyway). Right now, they just want to know how this company’s solution solves their company’s problems.
Your job is to produce content that engages and informs both audiences.
Delivers consistently
Companies work with freelancers because they offer flexibility. You get the professional work you need without increasing headcount.
But flexibility doesn’t equal flakiness. These clients want reliable freelancers. If you meet deadlines, communicate clearly, and address issues before they become roadblocks, they’ll hire you every time they have a writing project.
How Do I Start Learning?
How do you teach yourself about things like cloud computing or the internet of things?
Easy. By being curious and using your digital skills to satisfy that curiosity. If you’re a freelance writer, you likely spend a significant part of your day learning and reading, so it’s time to turn that curiosity to these topics by:
- Watching explainer videos on YouTube
- Reading other blog posts or news articles from high quality legacy publications and technology magazines
- Reviewing academic journals (or just the abstract if there’s a paywall)
- Reading Reddit and Quora for basic explanations of hyper specific technical terms or processes
Finally, a marketing manager or director understands that their writer will not have the same level of knowledge as their R&D team. They just want someone who’s curious, proactive, and reliable.
The best marketing managers go above and beyond to provide you with all the information you need, because they’re excited by your enthusiasm. They’ll provide product sheets, helpful articles, and even set up calls with internal subject matter experts.
Keep reading and keep learning until you feel confident enough to ask intelligent questions about the topic at hand.
If you do that, you can confidently pitch yourself to higher paying clients and make more money while building your portfolio as a niche content writer.
