Becoming a content writer doesn’t take much, to tell the truth. There’s no examination to pass. Anyone can call themselves one. But if you’d like to build a strong reputation where people consistently refer you jobs and work, I'd recommend doing things the slow and hard way. By really learning to write.
When I started this work in 2016 it was a very different world, and I've watched many writers quickly surpass me only to burn out. One day I see them posting about all their clients. The next, they've taken a full-time job, then a sabbatical, because they couldn't sustain it. Whereas I've ploddingly contributed my million or so words a year for ten years and each day strove to be better.
I have not done things the easy way, and I can't claim this method is the best. But these are my rules and whatever wisdom I have to offer about not just becoming a content writer, but a good one. Not just finding gigs, but building an enduring career.
In this truncated guide, I share how to:
- Learn to write clearly
- Find a writing niche
- Understand content marketing strategy
If you find this intriguing, you might enjoy my newsletter, The Rewild.
The real work of a content writer is to think
While you’ll be hired to write, the majority of the job is actually thinking, reading, and planning. Sorry if that comes as a surprise. The writing is really only the last step, albeit the most visible one. Clients are looking for a writer because what they want to buy is the finished product—the article, the ebook, or the video script. But they tend not to know what’s needed to assemble it, or what’ll make it effective, and that’s where you can be the greatest help.
For example, let’s say a startup that sells web analytics software hires you to produce a series on how growth marketers can use their software. You have two options: do as asked or ask questions.
“The majority of the job is actually thinking, reading, and planning.”
If you do as asked, you’re probably limited to relying on material you can find online. Likely, you’ll Google the term and borrow ideas from the top ranked articles. The series you produce may make the client happy. But it is very, very unlikely to help them achieve their goal because, well, what was their goal?
If you had asked questions, you’d realize they hope to compete in search with Google Analytics. Google Analytics has nearly five million customers. It has a domain rating (a measure of how difficult it is to beat) of 91 out of 100—near impossible—and 119 million backlinks. Your client would need a miracle to be successful. And anyway, why are the articles about their product? What’s their customer journey, and what’s really keeping more people from purchasing? Do prospective growth marketers need to know about the product, or would it be better for them to hear about the problem it solves, because that’s what they’re actually searching for?
Without answers, there’s no way to actually be of use to your client. And if your articles aren’t useful, that marketer probably won’t have budget to hire you again. If you want recurring work, you must cultivate the three essential skills of content writing and commit to being much more than just a writer.
Read: Why writing skills make you an SEO wizard →
The three essential content writer skills
Three skills will make you successful here:
- Clear writing—Convey your meaning in simple, compelling language.
- Domain expertise—Know a lot about a vertical or business type.
- Content strategy—Know which channels and formats will work best.
Clear writing is what’s likely to get you hired. That’s the thing that will shine through in your work samples, and attract clients. So if you have to pick one skill to cultivate first, that’s it. I recommend four books on this subject:
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
- Dryer’s English by Benjmain Dreyer
- The Storytelling Edge by Shane Snow and Joe Lazauskas
From these books, you’ll learn that good writing is concise, vigorous, and free of buzzwords or cliché. It’s borne out of great empathy for your reader—a person dealing with a troublesome issue at work who needs your guidance—and is full of true and beautifully simple stories.
Writing a skill you will forever be refining. Begin now, and expect to keep at it for a long, long time.
“Good writing has no unnecessary words for the same reason a design has no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
— Strunk and White
The next skill is domain expertise, and that’s harder to come by. That’s a deep understanding of your client’s business and the work lives of their customers. It almost invariably comes from having done that job yourself, or been very close to someone who has, because so little of the information, feelings, and beliefs surrounding it are written down. You can go your entire career writing about litigation lawyers and never understand that life as fully as someone who spend their early career as one.
For this reason, writers tend to write for fields that are already familiar to them. Fenwick’s Co-Founder, Chris Gillespie, spent four years selling marketing software and, no surprise, began writing for those type of companies.
There’s really no shortcut to domain expertise but to have done the job, know someone who does it, or spend a tremendous amount of time talking to people in that space. Once you accumulate this knowledge, however, you develop a niche, within which, you become known.
Take the writer Kirsten Nelson for example. Kirsten’s a deep specialist in “audio-visual experience design,” something neither of us has likely heard of. But she has an endless queue of clients begging for her time because she’s virtually the only one of her skill level doing this work.
“There’s really no shortcut to domain expertise but to have done the job, know someone who does it, or spend a tremendous amount of time talking to people in that space.”
And finally, there’s content strategy. This is what we were getting at in the introduction when we asked whether you’d ask that web analytics startup any questions. Very often, clients want to buy the finished product. But that article or ebook isn’t what’s going to fix their problem, and they don’t realize this yet. Being a content strategist is about asking them questions to uncover the root cause such that you can envision fixes.
For instance, in the example we provided earlier, if your startup client’s competitor is unbeatable in search, why not host a webinar with someone famous in the analytics space, and invite prospective buyers one-by-one? Or write emails? Or create a course?
You’ll build your content strategy skills by working closely with marketers, or the people we call “promoters.” That’s anyone responsible for generating a list of names, leads, or accounts to pass along to the sales team. Promoters tend to have titles like “content marketer,” “demand generation director,” and “growth marketer.” They can help you understand what content gets read and encourages people to sign up to talk to the sales team, so you can develop a sense of how to actually fix your client’s problems.
How content writers spend their time
The following breakdown is a rough approximation based on Chris Gillespie’s freelance career.
- 10% Reading: As Stephen King and countless others have said, to be a great writer, you must read a lot. In many genres.
- 15% Research: Content writers frequent sites and sources they know and trust. Over time, they build a mental catalog of where useful information can be found for their industry—like the Harvard Business Review, Gartner, and Statista. It’s probably not unlike how London cab drivers eventually commit every street to memory—and also like cabbies, it probably enlarges that region of the writer’s brain.
- 20% Strategy: To write successful content, writers need to know their audience and how their audience will interact with their work. If your readers are attention-starved stock brokers, you know to use lots of spaces and to whittle your introductions into brief hooks. If you know that your audience has opted into your marketing and wants to receive emails, you know you can skip the introductions and get to the good stuff.
- 5% Pitching: Most content marketing operations have an editor, or at least a manager, who assigns and approves topics. Content writers either pitch or are assigned stories. The upside to pitching is you get to write about topics that interest you. The upside to being assigned stories is you save time.
Pro tip: Every pitch needs a big idea. The world is awash in content. To stand out, your pitch needs a kernel of truth: A personal experience, an exclusive source, or an original idea. This isn’t something you can pluck from a cursory Google search. Hence, the need for domain expertise—whether your own or someone else’s.
- 50% Writing: At least half of a content writer’s time is spent writing and editing. And rewriting. And rewriting. And rewriting.
Types of Content Writer
Content writers often describe themselves by the writing formats and vertical(s) they specialize in. For example, a healthcare technical writer or an executive article ghostwriter. They do this for two reasons:
- Having a niche helps you find clients. It’s easier to filter through job posting sites.
- Having a niche helps clients find you. Marketers and editors looking to hire will have an easier time recognizing that you’re a fit for their team or publication if your niche is in your title.
Common niches and content formats:
- Long-form writer—Articles, ebooks, guides
- Technical writer—User guides, white papers, patents, documentation
- Copywriter—Generalist; websites, articles, videos, speeches
- Social media writer—Social posts, profiles
- UX or product writer—In-app copy and product updates
- Direct response writer—Ads
- Conversation writer—Chatbot and virtual assistant conversations
Common writing verticals:
- Technology or software
- Finance
- Healthcare
- Education
- Government
- Banking
- Transportation
- Law
Most content writers offer some degree of strategy that’s specific to their area of specialty. It helps if they’re familiar with marketing funnels, content matrices, content backlogs, editorial calendars, and buyer journeys, and know which pieces of content are most effective when. If the writer is involved in planning the structure of the marketing program, they might also call themselves a content strategist.
What does a content strategist do?
A content strategist plans, promotes, and measures content. This is the person that tends to assign work to other content writers after they’ve planned it or written outlines—though if you’re an experienced content writer, you can often do much of it yourself.
If content marketing is a race, strategists pick the drivers and lay the track. They conduct SEO research to identify keywords, interview customers to learn where they get their news, produce a backlog of ideas, assign pitches, publish articles, and measure the results. Strategists ensure that not only are the individual pieces of content are great, but in sum, they product marketing results.
Should you go full-time or freelance?
Each has benefits. Freelance offers more flexibility, the opportunity to be pickier about the work you take, and often, higher salaries for content writers. But finding work as a freelancer can also be stressful if you don’t already have an established network. Full-time work provides freedom of mind, consistent pay, and the opportunity to specialize, but there’s less freedom to constantly reinvent yourself.
Full-time work can be a great springboard for freelance: Most freelancers’ first client is their previous employer. And if you have strategy experience, you can bill yourself as a freelance content strategist and help clients both plan and write.
How to Earn Real Paying Clients
To earn consistent paying clients and work, know what differentiates you from other writers. Do you have deep knowledge in virtual reality technology? Do you have extensive experience testing email headlines? Is your writing fun and massively shareable?
Create a portfolio, website, or social profile that advertises your differentiator, offerings, and examples of past work. Always work on refining your craft by asking trusted peers for feedback and taking content writing courses. Then, making a habit of reaching out to your network to:
Ask for referrals: Ask colleagues and existing clients if there’s anyone who needs your help. The best thing about referrals is that they work like homing pigeons. People only refer you to others who already need your help, and the fact that you come highly recommended quickens the deal.
Conduct cold outreach: When your lead flow falters, reach out to companies who you’re a good fit for. Finding them is as easy as looking at current or past clients’ websites and reaching out to their partners (and possibly, competitors). You can also search for jobs on LinkedIn and reach out to the hiring manager.
Inbound marketing: Build a reputation, social profiles, and a website that attract potential clients, even while you’re busy writing. It takes longer to get that going than outbound sales (battling for SEO terms is a real odyssey), but once it gets going, it takes a lot less work to manage.
Places to look for content writing work
To get your first paying client, look in these places, in this order:
1. Current or past employer
This is the most common route for new freelancers. Your past employer already knows (and hopefully likes) you and respects your work. Fenwick’s Co-Founder Chris Gillespie made the transition by learning to write for his previous company’s blog before striking out on his own.
2. Premium writing network
The companies Contently, Welcome (formerly Newscred), and Skyword all have a closed, selective “pool” of writers who they connect with companies that use their software. They’re much more exclusive than any other option on this list, but pay the best. On the low end, Contently pays $380 per article, and on the high end, $1,100. You can create a free Contently profile and host links to your work, but you’ll have to talk to someone there to “green light” you on the platform, and they’ll want to see bylines in major magazines or news sites.
3. Job sites (LinkedIn, Indeed, etc.)
Search for jobs in your desired industry with titles such as content writer, content manager, in-house writer, content marketing manager, and the like. Job searches are just as relevant for freelancers. Sometimes you’ll be able to see who posted the job. Pay the $30 or so per month for LinkedIn premium and message that person asking if they’d be open to an experienced freelance contributor.
4. Writer job boards
These are hit or miss. Those that allow you to build a profile and allow brands to search for you are ideal. It’s passive lead flow, as opposed to you having to conduct repetitive searches week after week.
5. Approach small businesses
Look for small businesses, ideally ones you like and interact with, and ask them if they need help rewriting their website, writing flyers, or sending emails. It’s rarely high-paying, but it’s a way to get your first few projects.
6. Freelancing sites
Generalist freelancing sites are near the bottom of the barrel. They’re oversaturated (16 million freelancers on UpWork alone) and enforce a competitive race to the bottom in terms of pay that makes it tough to demand a living wage. Our recommendation: Create a killer profile on several of the top ones, set your rates high to weed out tire kickers, work 1-2 projects just to build your profile, and then let businesses reach out to you.
7. Content mills
Avoid content mills unless you’re desperate. They farm out content writing jobs from undiscerning brands to freelance writers. The pay is scandalous (just a few cents per word, often as little as $15 per article) and the deadlines are tight. You’re unlikely to produce reputable work under these conditions. Many freelance forums like r/freelanceWriters are filled with sob stories from writers begging to escape content mill purgatory.
This is where the real world begins
If you want to break into content writing, you’ll find you’ll often be hired to do the writing, but then expected to do much more. To help your clients be successful, and to earn their recurring business, you’ll have to cultivate three skills: clear writing, domain expertise, and content strategy.
And there’s really no way to go about that except the slow and hard way: through lots and lots of work.
For more freelance writing resources, visit our resource page for freelancers.
