Why Become a Content Writer

There are obvious and not-so-obvious benefits.

The obvious ones include lucrative salaries (after you gain some experience), freedom, and a great work-life balance. Many professional content writers like myself work from home. Some prefer to travel the world while doing so.

As you can imagine from the volume of posts published on this website and the frequency at which I drop them, I do have a healthy work-life balance. It helps me pursue other endeavors, including building this website.

The not-so-obvious benefits demand a little more explanation because those come with a few requirements. Let’s look at them one by one.

1. Hard skills pay exponentially

Hard skills generate value. A lot of people miss out on making a huge amount of cash by only investing in soft skills which is communication. Relaying what’s on your mind isn’t gonna pay you much because you’ll always have competition regardless of how experienced you get.

However, when it comes to hard skills, with time, you will face less competition while your skills grow exponentially. Trust me, my drafts from a year ago are considerably ‘pale’ compared to this very chapter.

Content writers, whether full-time job holders or freelancers, write every day. This enables you to get better automatically without trying. After a few years, especially if you take up blogging, you can make some serious cheddar.

Be mindful that this opens an opportunity for the sigmas out there. You can grow faster within this industry if you grind hard to improve your skillset better than others. I know a few content writers who earn twice my salary through freelancing!

2. People need content, always

Regardless of which era you were born, writers always get paid. All you have to do is serve any of the three purposes: entertainment, information, and education. These always exist through time and have many categories within them.

For instance:

• Entertainment: Novels, jokes, poems, satirical articles, sports reports, etc.

• Information: Company announcements, news articles, journalistic papers, etc.

• Education: Academic articles, technical whitepapers, customer education guides, etc.

Consequently, you can choose to get into any realm of your choosing. Plenty of writers work in a domain they are passionate about. It could be about gadgets, software, marketing, or the economy.

3. Lower barrier of entry

Complete beginners can make money writing as long as they have a decent laptop with 8GB of RAM. You may need a few weeks of training, depending on how good you already are. I still use my Mi Notebook Horizon 14 that I bought in 2020 (currently running Linux Mint) to do office work.

Furthermore, you can develop this skill by schlepping an hour or two per day or 8-13 hours per week. This makes the content writing field accessible to folks employed in a different field.

Young professionals, freshers, and college students can invest in their careers wisely by getting their foot in the door early. I ventured into content writing after finishing my engineering and after about five years into my professional career, I am making a pretty decent chunk of change.

Folks desiring to change fields can consider the content writing industry for this reason as well.

The time to money is surprisingly short. Speaking from experience.

4. Easy to beat the competition

According to websites like Glassdoor and AmbitionBox, my salary lies in the top ten percentile of the salary range for professionals with 5-7 years of experience.

This is my fifth year, which started a couple of months ago, as a content writer.

You might wonder if there is any secret.

Well, the secret is hard work. I write about 1500 words per day, including weekends and holidays. 

In the broader sense, yes there are days when I write zero words, especially if I am out of town or traveling. However, there are days when I clock 4000 words. 1500 per day sounds right.

But there are nuances to it. I am pretty certain that there are writers that average more words than me, but aren’t half as good. 

One of my key ingredients is writing on a diverse set of topics, even though I am not getting paid for it. Things like sporting events, journals, and analyses help exercise the writing muscle in a variety of ways.

You can also experiment with different formats of content. For example, social media posts, books, guides, infographics, etc., will improve your skills on a deeper level.

And finally, there is artificial intelligence. I’ve been making money by saving time and expediting my content creation process with AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. My overall workflow is published in a book that dives into content writing with AI and its practical applications.

The improvement in your skillset comes as you understand your own writing style, the psychology of your reader, and the overall art of persuasion. Hence, to build the competition, you must master the three fundamentals.

Wrapping up

We exist in a world where consuming more is seen as a virtue. It is imperative that you identify this opportunity and seize it with both hands. 

Written content is easy to create and anyone with a few hundred dollars for a decent laptop can enter the industry. Moreover, you can improve effortlessly after getting your foot through the door by simply doing your job daily.

Professionals can accelerate their career growth as a content writer by learning the fundamentals of persuasion, writing, and marketing.

Until next time,

Tara

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

Previous Chapter: What is Content Writing

Index (Prologue): What is Content Writing