Learn how to build trust and authority to make your writing career into a profitable business.
If you are writing as a hobby, you’re limiting your success. But if you do it part-time, you still need to consider it as a business.
If you are serious about writing, you most likely want to earn revenue from it. It’s good to be rewarded for the effort you put into your writing, proofreading, and editing.
So, let’s get started learning how to turn your writing career into a profitable business.
You’ll want to show that you are an authority figure on any subject you write. That will build trust so your readers will appreciate the value of your content. That also makes search engines rank your content higher.
It will help if you put effort into consistently making all your articles of stellar quality, with no grammar or spelling errors. More importantly, it means you did your research to ensure your content's accuracy.
I always include a list of references at the bottom of my articles that required extensive research. The format of those references should be in proper APA Citation Style.
Publish only your best material. I write much more than the world will ever see. I try to be my own worst critic. If I don’t feel good about the material I wrote, I leave it in my archives.
Nothing is wasted. Sometimes I bring something out from my archives for another purpose where it’s worth something to the reader. I always ask myself that question — does it have value?
When I do decide to publish an article, I spend more time cleaning it up than I spend writing it. That’s the business aspect of the work.
Imagine you have a boss, and they throw your script back at you and say, “It’s not good enough. You need to develop the conclusion much better. Your point wasn’t clear. You ran into too much rhetoric.”
The point I’m making is that you need to proofread more than once, rework your content so the logic flows as intended, and do research to offer the best content possible.
Part of the business is working on keeping old articles up to date. Always take the time to review your previously written material and keep it fresh.
Google likes fresh content. You'll do better with search engine ranking when your articles are accurate with current information.
That’s part of the business. If readers stumble upon something I wrote a long time ago that’s not accurate, I will lose that reader entirely once they realize they wasted time reading obsolete material.
If you lose enough readers that way, Google will catch up to you and drop your ranking so low that your material just won’t appear in the SERPs anymore.
EAT stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.” Google uses that term in its Search Quality Guidelines.
To rank well with Google, you need to make sure you cover all three of these items.
If you write articles that are purely your opinion on a particular subject, make that clear right up front. Don’t let your reader think you’re a journalist when you’re merely writing your opinion.
You can be an authority on an opinion piece. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s called an Op-Ed, which means a personal opinion opposite the editorial page.
I sometimes see articles where people make the mistake of posting images they found in a Google image search or on Pinterest without checking the copyright status.
Those might be copyright-protected. One has to visit the site Google links to and search for copyright permission statements. Most people say the images are from Google images.
They think stating where they found the image is sufficient, but those images are not from Google just because Google displays them. They are from another site that Google merely references.
If you use those images, you might be infringing on their copyright, giving the copyright holder the right to request your entire page to be taken down under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
I use TurboTax to file my taxes every year, but even if you’d rather hire an accountant, you need to keep good records. That includes all income from all sources and all deductible expenses.
When you buy paper or ink for your printer or purchase books as learning aides for your writing career, enter the information into a journal. Include the date, cost, store where purchased, the item, and the purpose.
I never deduct items that I use personally. Only what pertains to the writing business is tax-deductible.
My reason is that if you ever get audited, you won’t have any disputes with the IRS. However, it’s best to review your situation with a professional accountant.
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