Content writing is the best-kept money-making secret on the web.

These content writing tips are aimed at beginner content writers (or even just beginner writers) who want to make money with their words. Content writing is a great source of income because it’s a tricky skill to learn that not everyone can do. If you can figure out how to do it well, you’re set for life.

What is content writing? Content writing is the skill of writing an engaging, interesting, useful piece of content that serves some kind of secondary commercial purpose, such as raising awareness of a product, getting email signups, or driving traffic to another website. Types of content writing include articles, emails, social media captions, and more.

It’s not quite the same as copywriting, which is written purely to sell. It’s not exactly the same as SEO writing, which is written purely to rank. It’s also not precisely the same as regular blogging, which is written to entertain in some way. Content writing sits at the intersection of all three.

Some really great examples of content writing include Aytekin Tank’s articles, which revolve around his product, Jotform. His articles tell a compelling story but are ultimately written to raise awareness and interest in his commercial product.

At the end of the day, everyone benefits — the reader got a great story and found a product they might like; Tank gets an audience of readers who have self-selected as people potentially interested in the problems his product solves.

Anyone can get started making money with content writing from home. These content writing tips for beginners will help you no matter if you want to use content writing for your own website or product, or if you want to attract and retain clients to do content writing for. I do both! Let’s get started.

Content writing tips for beginners

These nine content writing tips will help any beginner understand what content writing is, how to get started, and what to watch out for.

1. Remember, it’s not an ad

This is the biggest misunderstanding about content writing. Many people believe it’s a thinly veiled ad. There is a name for thinly veiled ads, and it’s ‘copywriting’.

Content marketing typically reaches a reader at an earlier stage in their buying cycle. Instead of convincing someone to buy, you’re usually convincing them to do something a little easier like sign up to a mailing list or download a free resource.

Content writing does have to be persuasive, but it shouldn’t be focused on the sell.

2. Get into your reader’s head

Content writing is designed to entertain, solve a problem, engage, or inform a reader. You can’t do that if you don’t understand your reader.

Let’s work through an example. Perhaps I’ve been hired by a client who sells cat toys to produce content that will get readers to sign up to their mailing list. What is this reader’s problem? What is their lifestyle? What are they googling? I try to create content that will speak directly to that person.

Examples might include:

• 5 Cat Toys That Are 100% Safe For Cats to Chew On

• 17 Cat Toys That Will Keep Your Bored Cat Entertained

• 4 Ways to Train Your Cat to Sit

3. Do your research on your client

It’s also critical to deeply understand who’s hired you, or who you’re targeting to be hired by if you’re using my method of attracting freelance clients. This lets me create content that fits their branding and style, and that they’ll be happy with. No matter what content writing format you go for, the client should always be your secondary concern (after the reader!).

It’s a fine line. A client will want you to go in for a harder sell. A reader obviously does not want to be bombarded with an ad when they thought they were reading something useful. By better understanding your client, you’ll be able to write content that makes them happy while still keeping the reader at the top of the priority list.

4. Write compellingly

Too many content writing tips focus on the mechanics of the content, as I’ve done for the three tips above. Does your writing answer a reader’s problem or question? Will your client be happy with what you’ve produced?

But the best content writing tips go beyond that. They help you create written content that is compelling. If your content writing ticks all the boxes of “good content writing” but not the boxes of “good writing” then nobody will read it.

Make sure you’re spending time on creating content writing that is interesting and engaging. How can you get a reader to click? How can you deliver on your promise?

These questions will help you create compelling content writing.

🔍 Related: Avoid ‘inkhorning’ — tips on writing warmer copy

5. Think about your takeaway: what do you want your reader to do after they finish reading?

All content writing is geared to make the reader take some kind of action, like sign up, download, learn more, etc. But that’s not what this content writing tip is talking about.

Again, too many content writing guides are geared around the logistics of writing and not enough about the emotions. Writing is extremely powerful when focused correctly. When you create content writing, you need to hone in on the feeling you want your reader to associate with your content and the action you want them to take. There’s no better place where you get to control that than the conclusion.

Going back to my cat example, let’s say I want my readers to feel full of love for their cats and excited to make their pets happy. I might write a conclusion that pulls on their heartstrings by talking about my own love of my cats, or how important cats are and how happy they make humans.

6. Consider SEO

Google is getting better at de-gamifying search engine optimization, which is important to know for content writing tips in 2021 and beyond. These days, if you just stuff your content with keywords, or hack your backlinks, you won’t go far. You have to actually write good content to rank.

I’ve ranked for keywords accidentally just because I wrote good articles about specific topics that Google recognized as likely to be what a searcher is looking for.

That being said, content writing tips for SEO are still good to go over. I typically ensure that:

• I have a keyword in mind. I use Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to come up with a good one. I look for a keyword that has high traffic and low competition.

• My keyword or keyword phrase makes up between 1%-1.5% of my content. For example, if I write a 1,500-word article trying to rank for “cat toys for kittens” I make sure that keyword shows up between 15–22 times in my article.

• My article has a good chance of knocking off one of the first-page results. I Google my keyword and use the MOZ toolbar to look at PA (page authority) and DA (domain authority). If they are below 30–40 for an article, I stand a good chance of dethroning them.

• My article has something others don’t. If most existing articles discuss six cat toys, I’ll add a seventh. Or I can discuss toys that are totally safe, or good for specific breeds, or that hold up to heavy wear-and-tear. Go the extra mile.

These four tips are easy to implement and help your content stand a chance to rank, no matter how SEO-savvy or SEO-unaware you are.

🔍 Related: SEO misconceptions that drive copywriters mad

7. Most writing best practices apply to content writing, too

Good content writing = good writing, as I mentioned earlier. A lot of the best practices that help good writing stand out will also be good content writing tips to help your work improve.

For all my articles, whether content writing, blogging, copywriting, or SEO, I focus on the following three things:

• Hero’s journey. This is the oldest story in the book. Who is the hero in your story? Who’s the villain? What do they overcome? Humans love stories, and if you can tell a good one, they’ll read whatever you write. I recommend Reedsy’s resource on the Hero’s Journey to learn more.

• Pacing. A good story is well-paced. It never lags and it never rushes. The way I ensure my stories are well-paced is to read aloud, to a friend or family member if I can. The minute they look bored, I trim. If they look confused, I expand. You can accomplish similar results just by reading aloud to yourself, too, if you can’t find a sacrifice/volunteer.

• Clarity and structure. Is there anything left unanswered? Do the sections flow well together? Is your writing choppy? This is slightly different from pacing but can be addressed with the same mechanism: reading aloud. Read your content writing aloud the way you’d read a bedtime story to a kid. How does it flow? Does it make sense all the way through?

8. Make it web-friendly

It’s critical to understand that any content writing will be consumed on the web, not in a physical book. Your content writing should be easy for Google to search and rank (SEO) but also for a reader to easily parse and digest on screen.

Take the following example from the Hero’s Journey resource I linked earlier. Here you can see it’s web-friendly because Google has been able to take section headers and turn them into chunks in the blog description.

But if you click into the article, you’ll see it’s also web-friendly on the human side. There’s a table of contents to make it easily ‘skimmable’. The text is simple, clear, and easy to understand for anyone.

Good content writing is straightforward and web-friendly on both the machine and human sides.

9. Have fun

The final content writing tip I have to offer is to have fun. If you don’t love writing, and you don’t enjoy different kinds of writing or optimizing your writing for different audiences, you probably won’t be a good content writer.

Content writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You will have to work hard and learn plenty of new skills. If you’re not having fun, this isn’t for you.

Content writing should be a joyful exercise in crafting exceptional writing that solves a problem and is useful for readers. Enjoy it!

These content writing tips can help you monetise your joy of writing

For a long time, I thought the only way to make money writing was to write a best-selling novel, a la Sally Rooney.

I was floored to learn that if you love writing, and you’re good at it, there are literally unlimited ways to make your living with your words.

Content writing is one of my favourite ways to do so because the only real requirement is that you love to tell a good story. Everything else will come fairly easy.

If you’ve felt frustrated that your blog isn’t earning enough money through ads or royalties, and you’re fed up with copywriting or scrounging for SEO juice, I recommend content writing.

You can find some of your first content writing clients using the process I outline in my workshop, or try your luck with pitches.

Once you have some clients, the content writing tips above will help you make the most of your new career option.

=====

Now you’ve read this, you may be interested in