Yes, You Can Write For Both Love AND Money!
Why B2B writing is a goldmine and how to make a joyful living writing about seemingly boring topics…
Forget all those get rich quick writing schemes that are all over Medium these days. They’re mostly nonsense.
Try this instead…
Do APIs turn you on?
Is SaaS sassier than hell to you?
Do you get a solid state drive when you think about IT?
Does lean manufacturing methodology send you all of a quiver?
No?
Thought not.
They do it for me though.
Why?
Because I make a pretty good living writing about the kind of topics that most people would find boring.
B2B stands for ‘business to business’ and there are plenty of opportunities for writers to make money writing marketing materials to showcase a businesses products and services to other businesses.
And after 8 years of writing about this stuff, I bring a unique style and process to the table that my clients (and their customers) seem to love.
It’s the reason why people are happy to pay upwards of $90 per hour to hire me for things like blog posts and white papers…
The good news is — it’s not that hard to make boring topics interesting.
The bad news is — it takes a while to master it and unlock the higher earnings.
In a moment, I’ll reveal exactly how I do it, along with some actionable tips to help you on your way.
Why should you be interested?
If you’re looking to break into writing for a living, I think B2B writing is a great place to start for these reasons:
- Earn while you learn — You’ll hone your craft as a writer and get paid pretty well for it.
- Lots of clients — In B2B, there’s a shortage of good writers. In 8 years, I haven’t had a single lean month.
- Repeat work — I’m still working with clients that I landed 7 or 8 years ago. When businesses find a good writer, they cling to them for dear life. And as they grow, it means more work for you.
Let me put it this way: if you master writing for both yourself AND your audience, you can make a very good living as a freelance B2B writer.
You don’t even have to be a great writer. I certainly wasn’t when I started.
These days, I’m in the top 1% of writers on Upwork, but started out on just $6 per hour, as I explain here:
Thankfully, that quickly increased and within 6 months I was earning a livable wage — enough to support me and my family (and pet dog!)
Okay, enough about me and my dog!
Let’s focus on the process.
Here are the steps to make sure you’re writing the best possible content even for boring topics.
1. Get into the mind of your target reader
Take the time to build a clear image in your mind of who you’re writing to.
In B2B, this means working out what they do for a living to start with.
For instance, I’m writing a lot about smart manufacturing tech at the moment and most of the readers are factory operations mangers or production managers.
To write good content, you need to know your target market’s pain points, fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations. You also need to know how they talk and what they talk about.
One tip that’s really useful is to search for “a day in the life of” videos on YouTube.
Watching a few of these gives you two valuable things:
- Real-life insights into your target reader’s daily activities and challenges
- You get to hear how they speak and think
Both are great for writing content that speaks directly to the target audience and make a strong impact.
Some other good places to look are Quora and Reddit.
These days, to save you time during this stage, you can use ChatGPT combined with Reddit and Quora to help you with the market research:
Personally, I still take the time to read through and watch the content, as it will helps to make your writing more authentic and engaging. However, ChatGPT can be good to get a quick initial overview.
2. Get deeper insights
Once you have a good idea of the your target reader and you’ve created a marketing persona, it’s time to dig deeper into the topic.
For that reason, I subscribe to several email newsletters in my speciality fields. Find and subscribe to newsletters that are from top publications and thought leaders.
I’ve set up my email inbox so that it automatically moves them into folders for smart manufacturing technology, content writing news, data and AI, etc.
This is a really good way to get top insights from the various industries you write about, much better than a Google search in my opinion.
Publications like Industry Week are careful to curate the most interesting, up-to-date, and insightful content, which can give you lots of ideas for great content for your clients.
Of course, you can also use AI tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas. I find this good for certain things like headlines or general content ideas, but not so good for actually writing the content.
3. Use AI to help with brainstorming
Of course, you can also use AI tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas.
AI tends to regurgitate same-old, same-old ideas, so your content won’t stand out. Much better to get your ideas from a variety of sources and mix them to come up with something new.
But you can use AI to stimulate your creative thinking. That’s how I use it.
Fortunately, I’ve written dozens of articles over the past year on how to use ChatGPT creatively to help stimulate content ideas. Here are a few top ones that have racked up 1000’s of views and reads:
4. Generate a joyful mood in yourself before writing
Okay, this is probably the most surprising one…
A serious B2B tech writer saying you have to get emotional to write…
Yes — that’s exactly what I’m saying!
The thing that most people don’t realise is, the mood you’re in when you write is reflected in the writing.
If you’re bored to tears or half asleep — your writing will be as dull as ditch water.
If you’re excited and motivated to write great content — your writing will sprakle. It will inspire people to keep reading and engage.
No prizes for guessing which type of writing works best commercially.
That’s not to say I’m always hyped up with a beaming smile when writing. Far from it.
But I try to generate some kind of excitement in myself about the topic.
Find a new angle that nobody else has thought of.
Think of an interesting metaphor.
Watch an inspirational video or listen to a podcast by an upbeat thought leader in the industry.
If all that fails, then I find that going out and taking a walk, clearing your head, then coming back with a fresh mind can uplift your mood too.
The important thing is to get into a relaxed, but highly alert and slightly excited state. When I’m in that mood I do my best writing.
Often, when you write in this slightly elevated state, you’ll go over the top — but that’s fine for a first draft.
First drafts can be messy.
Everything I write gets edited at least once before sending it to a client or post it online myself.
Which brings me nicely on to my last point…
5. Writing is human. Editing is divine.
I wish I could take credit for that quote, but it’s actually from famous horror writer Steven King.
But he’s absolutely right.
When you write a first draft, you’re using emotional and creative energy to get the ideas out there. Free yourself to write whatever you want. Don’t judge anything you write, just write it.
The right hemisphere of your brain, the creative one, doesn’t like criticism, so don’t be tempted to edit at this point.
When you’ve finished your first draft, leave it for 24 hours, preferably 48 (not always possible with client deadlines, I know). Then begin editing.
When you edit —use a different eye. A highly critical, all-knowing one. Make sure that it flows wells and delivers something of value to the reader.
In fact, you should try and read it from the viewpoint of your target reader.
Ask yourself, “If I was reading this would I be interested in this section or this phrase?” If the answer is no, then lost it.
A large part of editing is trimming.
If you’re anything like me, and most writers or so I’ve heard, you probably overwrite your first drafts.
I usually end up trimming down first drafts by at least 10%, usually more like 20 to 30%. And that’s okay.
Just be aware that if your client asks for a 1000 word blog post, you may need to write a 1200 to 1300 word first draft before getting the scalpel out.
Oh, and don’t forget to use tools like Grammarly to help improve your grammar and pick up on misspellings. ChatGPT can also be used to critique your work from the perspective of the target reader.
However, I wouldn’t recommend using AI to actually run the edits.
AI has a tendency to write in a stilted and robotic stlye which puts people off. It’s not as organic or infused with creative energy as human writing, so don’t sacrifice that for the sake of speed and convenience.
When you edit, you should try to make the writing sound like natural speech.
It should flow as well as possible.
No long words and jargon if it can be avoided.
Simple, plain English.
Looking back over 8 years…
When I look back over my writing journey so far one thing stand out above all..
The joy that comes from doing something I love day-in, day-out and getting paid for it.
I never want to retire.
That tells you something.
And the key to bringing joy to your writing? Having a curious, open mind and the desire to learn.
If you pursue a career as a writer, you’ll never stop learning. This time last year, I was just starting to get my head around AI writing tools.
This year, I’m focusing more on writing from the heart and being as creative as possible.
My advice?
Put your heart and soul into it.
That’s what will make you stand out as a writer these days.
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I also publish my own children’s books on Amazon — D R Martin (I think grown up kids might like them too!)
AI Prompts Used While Writing This Blog Post
As mentioned here, I’m disclosing every ChatGPT prompt that I use to assist my blog writing.
No AI tools were used in the writing of this article (cub scout’s honour and cross my heart hope to die).
This one came from the heart ❤️Xxxx❤️