What to Expect From My Content Writing Book

This book will help lay the foundations for a strong content writing and marketing career.

The strategies I’ve mentioned in the upcoming chapters come from personal experience. I started this career with zero understanding of the craft and the industry. Within a few years, I am somewhere, and that’s putting it lightly.

If you genuinely want to generate value through words, it is certain that you can use the knowledge in this book to start and build a strong career as a content writer.

At the same time, I must set some realistic expectations to prevent you from believing it is a “get-rich-quick” scheme.

Challenges in building a hard skill-based career

There are plenty of jobs where a chunk of your work requires you to talk. Whether it is sales, support, or management, the core functionality is communication. These career options are relatively easier than the ones involving hard skills such as coding and creating content.

The primary reason is that the time to money is shortest in soft skills-based jobs. For instance, you can get started as a sales rep with minimal or zero experience. 

Same with most of the management jobs, particularly in human resources (HR). Yes, I am aware of the MBA requirement, but in terms of practical skill set, the barrier to entry is low.

All you need to do is be a silver-tongued devil who can write emails and host meetings.

However, it is different for a hard skill-based career.

It begins with you learning the theory behind it. In the case of coding, it is mathematics, logical reasoning, and machine languages. For content writing, it is research, persuasion, and directional creativity.

On top of that, you must get handy with the relevant software. I’d argue that it is simple for content writers. The primary tool is a document editor. Unless you are managing entire marketing campaigns, you won’t spend much time on this.

Finally, it is about practicing the craft and demonstrating your skill set. This has become more challenging than ever due to generative AI.

It is interesting to note that the latest Gen AI models are better than novice writers!

In other words, you have to grind harder to become better than AI before you can start to make stacks. Of course, you can still make a decent chunk of change during the early phases of your career, but you must out-do the machine.

You can demonstrate your skillsets by writing guest posts for popular publications and adding them to your portfolio. Then, the portfolio will get you hired.

Phew!

Develop pro-writing skills in six months*

*More like 6-12 months.

The actual duration depends on how frequently you churn out articles and the diversity of the topics you write about. If you write about 1000 words/day and the topics vary from technology to spirituality, it is possible that you can be more than ready within six months.

However, if you can only manage to push out 2-3k words/week, it may take longer.

Another factor is your proficiency in English, or the language of choice. Folks with native proficiency are capable of thinking in English, and consequently write better articles faster. 

Non-native speakers might struggle as their primary reasoning occurs in a different language.

Often, they’ve to translate it in their head to English before writing.

But with time even non-native speakers can master it. I’ve done it and it’s not that hard.

The critical components here are your consistency and training strategy. Plenty of consistent writers refrain from putting in some creative work, limiting their ability.

Furthermore, it is key to be mindful of the general trend of hard skill development, which is similar to learning a brand new language. Initially, you will pick things up faster but a few weeks later, the rate of growth will plateau, which will pick up again after a few months or so.

Similarly, with content writing, absolute beginners will make tremendous progress in the first week, which will seem to plateau by the time they reach the fourth weekend. 

The next wave of visible progress will occur after a couple of months. It is essential to remain patient during this period and focus on strengthening the fundamentals. I’ve shared various tips to expedite this process in this book.

Wrapping up

The “Content Writing Simplified” is aimed at professionals who want to build a career. It is certainly not for grifters looking for a quick hack. 

While it may sound disappointing, investing in a skill that has always been valuable in the history of human civilization is an excellent investment.

Now, there is more demand for content than ever. And getting into the content writing industry is the easiest due to the lowest barrier to entry. All you need is a basic laptop with 8 GB of RAM.

Here’s a fun exercise — write an article for every chapter you read in this book. Incorporate the things you learn as you go. You can choose the topic or niche. For faster brainstorming, you can check out my Title Suggestion GPT.

The next chapter talks about the different kinds of content writers, such as social media post creators, blog post authors, etc., to determine the core monetizable skills of the profession. This will also help you aim for the desired role, such as technical writer, email marketer, etc.

We will delve into the fundamentals of content writing right after that.

—

Next Chapter: Different Content Writing Career Options

Previous Chapter: What Does It Take to Be a Content Writer

Index (Prologue): What is Content Writing