Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Abstracts. These are capsule summaries of scientific articles and papers. Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, got his start writing abstracts for physics journals

2. Advertising. Thousands of organizations - from Madison Avenue ad agencies and Fortune 500 corporations, to small local businesses - need ads written to sell their products; American businesses spend $56 billion a year on newspaper and magazine
advertising

3. Annual Reports. Most large, publicly traded companies produce elaborate and expensive annual reports, for which the average writer's fee is $10,000 per report

4. Articles. This is the traditional defi nition of freelance writing: crafting articles for magazines and newspapers. Pay can range from nothing and abysmal to decent and occasionally high

5. Banner Ads. Banner ads are seeing a resurgence; they may have as few as half a dozen words, which you can get paid $500 or more to write

6. Billboards. Professional writers are needed to write pithy slogans on billboards and other outdoor signage

7. Biographies. Both traditional book publishers and wealthy individuals hire writers to craft biographies

8. Blogs. Increasingly, companies are paying bloggers as much as $100,000 a year to blog for them; popular bloggers are also landing book deals based on their blogs

9. Booklets. Companies publish booklets to educate and inform customers, and many writers publish and sell their own how-to booklets for money

10. Books. Another traditional venue for writers, where the pay, like magazine articles, can range from nominal to fantastic

11. Book Reviews. Although a low-paying assignment, many writers enjoy book reviewing, and you do get a lot of free books

12. Brochures. Despite the proliferation of websites, business prospects often tell salespeople, "Send me a brochure." You can charge $500 - $1,000 a page to write sales brochures for business clients

13. Bumper Stickers. Americans buy almost two million bumper stickers a year, and companies will pay up to $15 a word or more for slogans used on bumper stickers, coffee mugs, and other merchandise

14. Business Plans. Entrepreneurs need business plans to get money from banks and venture capitalists, and will pay you $10,000 or more to write one for them

15. Cartoons. The New Yorker pays $675 for a single cartoon, and dozens of other publications also buy cartoons

16. Case Studies. Also known as success stories and extended testimonials, case studies relate the experiences of a satisfied customer who has benefited from the product or service you are marketing

17. Catalog Copywriting. About $1 billion a year in merchandise is generated through catalog sales

18. Children's Books. Americans spend more than $3 billion annually on children's books, and of course the Harry Potter series has helped create a whole new generation of eager children's book readers

19. Christian Writing. Religious publishing in the United States is a $7.5 billion market, with 5,600 new Christian book titles published annually.

20. College Essays. Parents of high school students are hiring "college consultants" to help with the college selection and application process, including guidance and editing for the college entrance essay

21. Coloring Books. Young adult horror writer R. L. Stine got his start writing the text for coloring books. Although he was paid just $500 per book, each took less than a day to complete

22. Comic Books. Top comic book writers can earn more than $100,000 a year

23. Cookbooks and Recipes. One out of every ten books sold is a cookbook, generating cookbook sales of more than $1.3 billion a year

24. Copyediting. Freelance copy editors can earn $25 - $45 an hour or more

25. Corporate Histories. Companies will pay freelance writers $10,000 - $50,000 or more to write books about the corporation and its history; most are privately published by the company

26. Crossword Puzzles. Newspapers pay $40 - $75 per puzzle, except for the larger Sunday crossword, for which writers get $100 - $350 per puzzle

27. Direct Mail. It's a little-known fact that direct mail copywriting is one of the highest paying freelance copywriting assignments, with some direct mail writers earning as much as $10,000 or more, plus royalties, for a single sales letter.

28. eBay. eBay has 210 million registered users worldwide, who trade items worth a total of $12.6 billion; you can make money writing ads for eBay marketers or selling products yourself on eBay.

29. E-books. I make $3,000 a week selling self-published e-books and other information products online; the average e-book length is sixty pages

30. Email. My clients routinely pay me $1,000 - $2,500 per message to write short promotional emails they send to customers and prospects

31. Employee Communications. Freelance writers can earn $100,000 a year or more writing employee manuals, company newsletters, benefits booklets, and other materials to communicate company policies, rules, activities, plans, and benefits

32. Erotica. Sales of erotic romance fiction in the United States exceed$1 billion annually

33. Essays. Writing personal essays can be extremely satisfying and pay anywhere from nothing to $1,000; I was paid a $20,000 advance for a book of my essays some years ago

34. E-newsletters. Thousands of companies use short online newsletters, also called e-newsletters or e-zines, to regularly communicate with their customers at virtually no cost. They pay writers $500 - $3,000 per issue to research and write brief articles for these e-zines

35. Fantasy. If you can write an engaging fantasy novel for young readers or adults, you can write your own ticket; look at Terry Brooks and J. K. Rowling

36. Fund-Raising. Charities and other nonprofits use fund-raising letters to raise money for their causes, and top fund-raising writers can earn as much as $400,000 a year

37. Ghostwriting. Celebrities from Lee Iacocca to Bill O'Reilly pay ghostwriters handsome fees to write their books for them; non-celebrity individuals and companies also hire ghostwriters to produce books and articles

38. Google AdWords. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an underserved niche market for copywriters; clients need PPC ads that generate lots of traffi c at low cost

39. Grant Writing. Organizations in search of funding will often pay grant writers a percentage of the money raised for them

40. Greeting Cards. Hallmark and other companies use both staff and freelance writers to write greeting cards for every occasion.

41. Help Screens. Software companies hire freelancers to write help instructions for computer programs, which today are almost always online only

42. Horoscopes and Astrology. At least 90 percent of all Americans under age thirty know their sign. Americans spend more than $200 million a year consulting ten thousand practicing astrologers and bought twenty million astrology books in 2005

43. Horror. Advances for first horror novels can be $2,000 - $5,000, but top horror novelists receive considerably more; Dean Koontz, for instance, gets $6 million per book, according to www.darkecho.com

44. How-To Writing. Thousands of how-to books, DVDs, and audio learning programs are published annually, ranging from home improvement to finding a mate

45. Indexing. Book publishers pay $300 - $500 per project to write the indices for nonfiction books

46. Instructional Writing. Hundreds of products come with instructions, and professional writers are hired to write them. I was paid $6,000 to write a booklet for Toro on do-it-yourself installation of their underground sprinkler systems

47. Investor Relations. Companies send stock reports to mailing lists of investors to convince them to buy their shares; I frequently write these reports at a fee of $12,500 each

48. Jokes. Although they often don't admit it, many professional comics buy jokes from freelancers; fees start at $25 - $100 per joke, more if you have a track record or write for a superstar

49. Landing Pages. A landing page is essentially a long-copy sales letter posted on the Web and dedicated to selling a single product. The objective is to convert unique visits to orders

50. Love Letters. Pre-Internet, freelance writers wrote love letters for clients for $35 - $50 per letter; today, some clever entrepreneurs are selling prewritten love letters online

51. Medical Writing. Medical writers can get $6,000 - $15,000 to ghostwrite a "monograph" published under a doctor's name and sponsored by a pharmaceutical manufacturer to promote a new drug

52. Menus. This is a new market, as menus are a form of advertising. Restaurants, particularly the upscale variety, are starting to pay writers to create the text for a menu

53. Newspapers. It's easy to get started as a part-time reporter for your local weekly paper, and you can have a great full-time career working for a larger daily newspaper; the average freelance journalist earns about $50,000 a year

54. Novels. Many writers dream of writing the Great American Novel, and while they pursue that dream, they can use other writing opportunities in this book to pay the bills. Although the average advance for a first novel is often less than $10,000, some unknowns have received as much as a million dollars for their first novel

55. Outdoor Writing. Writing about hunting, shooting, fishing, nature, and the outdoors is an active genre; the Outdoor Writers Association of America has more than 1,300 members

56. Playwriting. Playwriting is one of the great venues of expressing mankind's angst with the world around him; while notoriously low paying, it could lead to a movie script or even a television series

57. Poetry. The pay is minimal, but if you take on some of the tasks outlined in the other chapters, you can make enough to afford to spend some time each day writing poetry

58. PowerPoint Presentations. You don't have to know PowerPoint or design the slides, but if you write text for the slides with speaker's notes, you can charge $1,000 - $1,500 for a PowerPoint presentation with ten to fifteen slides

59. Public Relations. A press release is a short announcement or short news story sent to the media to promote a company or its product. You can charge $250 - $1,000 or more for a one- to two- page release

60. Procedure Writing. Companies that want to be certified to the ISO 9000 quality standard for manufacturing must carefully document workplace procedures in writing, and professional writers charge thousands of dollars for this service

61. Professional Speaking. Writing speeches in general, according to 2006 Writer's Market, can pay $167 per hour or $2,700 - $10,000 per project, depending on the subject and who is delivering the speech

62. Proposal Writing. Freelancers who help businesses write proposals can charge $100 an hour and up

63. Public Seminars. Holding a public seminar or workshop is a great way to build recognition and sell your products; a two-day seminar can run about $300 per person

64. Radio Commercials. I regularly charge clients $2,000 to write a series of thirty- or sixty-second radio spots, and the assignment rarely takes more than half a day

65. Reports. Newsletter publishers, financial services firms, the federal government, and other clients routinely hire freelance writers to create all kinds of special reports, often sold as a product or given away as a premium

66. Resumes. Advertise "resume; writing service" in your local paper, and your phone will soon be ringing off the hook with job seekers willing to pay you $100 - $300 or more to whip their resumes into shape

67. Romance. More than half of paperback fiction sales are romance titles, generating $1.2 billion in annual revenues. A first-time author writing for Harlequin might receive $3,500 as an advance, while the average advance for an experienced romance novelist with a track record could be $5,000 - $7,000 for a category romance (a novel marketed as a romance)

68. Science Fiction. Getting published in genre fiction is often easier than breaking into mainstream fiction, but the pay scales are modest; science fiction (SF) magazines pay 5 - 9 cents per word for stories, and advances for SF novels average $5,000

69. Self-Help. Self-improvement, in all of its forms, is an $8.56 billion business, with 3,500 - 4,000 new self-help titles published in 2003 alone

70. Short Stories. Short fiction is one of the most artistically satisfying writing specialties, but also one of the most difficult to break into, as well as one of the lowest paying

71. Specification Writing. A specification is a statement of needs to be satisfied by the procurement of external resources; manufacturers, software companies, and other businesses hire "spec writers" to create precise definitions of their requirements for products and services to be purchased

72. Sports Writing. More than $16 billion is spent annually on attending sporting events, and both freelance and staff writers are needed to cover almost every sport imaginable

73. Syndicated Columnist. While some syndicated columnists are highly paid, it's a difficult field to enter: about 2,500 column ideas are submitted to King Features every year, and of these, less than 1 percent are selected annually

74. Tabloids. The tabloids are a top-paying market for freelance writers; the National Enquirer spends $16 million a year acquiring articles

75. Technical Writing. Technical writers can earn upwards of $100,000 a year working as staff, freelance, or contract (freelance but on site), creating systems documentation, user manuals, help screens, and other technical documents for corporate clients

76. Telemarketing Scripts. In 2002, telemarketing generated sales of more than $100 billion. Fees to write a five-minute telemarketing script are $1,000 - $3,000

77. Training and Development. I routinely earn $4,500 per day giving technical writing, business writing, and copywriting seminars to corporate clients

78. Travel Writing. A freelance travel writer who writes fast and has a few steady gigs can earn $50,000 a year writing travel articles, and also receive free travel worth $5,000 - $50,000 a year, depending on the markets covered

79. T-shirts. As with bumper stickers (see chapter 13), you can earn $10 or more per word for writing short slogans to be printed on T-shirts and other merchandise

80. TV Commercials. Freelance copywriters can earn $950 - $1,500 for a thirty-second spot, $2,500 - $4,000 for a two-minute direct response commercial, and $8,000 - $15,000 for a thirty-minute infomercial

81. Video Games. Surveys by executive recruiters show that staff writers for video game companies earn annual salaries of $35,000 - $75,000

82. Video Scripts. A freelance video scriptwriter can earn $2,000 - $4,000 for writing a short (fi ve- to eight-minute) video presentation promoting a product, service, or organization

83. Websites. There are more than a billion pages posted on the World Wide Web; you can easily charge $500 - $750 per page or more writing content and product descriptions for websites

84. Webinars. Web seminars and telephone seminars are enormously profitable; I have earned as much as $9,800 in a single hour marketing my own tele-seminars

85. White Papers. Software companies selling to information technology professionals, as well as other industries, use "white papers" - a cross between an article and a sales brochure - to promote their products. Fees vary, but $5,000 for a ten-page white paper is not uncommon

86. Word Processing. Although not writing, if you want to spend your time typing words, starting a home-based word processing business can generate a steady income for you, enabling you to work on your own writing between assignments

87. Writing for the Government. Most people don't realize the federal government is the largest publisher in the country, and thousands of government agencies regularly hire writers to turn out reports, proposals, and a variety of other documents

88. Young Adult. This market encompasses books written for readers between ages nine and nineteen; the world's wealthiest writer, J. K. Rowling, is a young adult author with a net worth of more than a billion dollars

Index

About the Author

Robert Bly (New Jersey) has been a professional writer since 1979 and a full-time freelance writer since 1982. He earns more than $600,000 a year from his writing and is a self-made multimillionaire. Bob is the author of 70 books. He lives in Dumont, New Jersey.