As of April 2022, I’ve officially been a professional content writer for seven years.
Honestly, it’s not something I set out to do.
Rather, content writing was just something I was interested in and (slowly) started to get paid for.
Today I offer a content writing service to companies and individuals all around the world. Best of all, I get to work my own hours, from wherever I choose.
I know this probably sounds like an annoying humble brag, but it’s something I’m still kind of surprised about.
Today, a lot of people ask me how I became a content writer.
These are people who have:
a) just learned about content writing, or
b) think that you need to go to college to become a professional writer
Well, in this article, I will explore how I became a successful content writer and how you can begin content writing either part-time or full-time.
I will also attempt to answer the two most popular questions I hear all the time:
‘What is a content writer?’
‘How do content writers get paid?’
So, if you’re interested in doing content writing, copywriting, SEO content strategy, or a blend of all three, this article will hopefully help you.
Getting Started as a Content Writer
So, how do you start a career as someone who writes content for websites, social media, or blog posts?
The short answer is that there is no direct path to becoming a content writer.
Everyone starts in their own way and figures out what works best for them.
Becoming a freelance writer is a journey with many twists and turns. Yet it can be enriching once you see your written content starting to appear in the search engines and getting clicks.
How I Became a Professional Content Writer
Back in 2015, I wanted to do ‘something’ in the startup world.
Like many people, I thought I would make millions of dollars if I created an app or software that could ‘change the world.’
After about a year of searching, I found a startup company working in the healthcare space with excellent market potential. I began by volunteering my time to work with them to help in any way that I could.
One of the main ways that they were getting new users to try their app was through inbound marketing. This concept was all the rage back in 2015 because Hubspot was changing the SEO landscape by creating thousands of pieces of content per month. As a result, Hubspot dominated the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and got a LOT of attention in the marketing world.
While I didn’t go to college for writing, I decided to volunteer my time and efforts to try to write a few blog posts for the startup. They agreed, and this was officially my first content writer job (although I didn’t get paid for the first few months).
I had no idea how to do keyword research or competitor analysis initially, so I just wrote about random topics in the healthcare space that I hoped would rank.
However, after a few months of writing one-to-two articles a week, I realized I needed to upscale my SEO knowledge. That’s when I discovered SEO writing.
Learning SEO Content Writing
Great content writers don’t just write articles that they think might be interesting.
Instead, they study their market, find out the questions people are asking, and then aim to answer them in articles published as web content.
Soon I was reading a ton of content marketing books and listening to many content marketing podcasts. I also began studying SEO on sites like Moz, Backlinko, and others.
Within about a year of working as a content writer for the startup, I had published over 100 articles, and I was well on the way to becoming an SEO content writer.
Fast forward another few years, and I decided to try my hand at freelance writing for different industries. During this time, I would aim to write one new blog post or article a day and try to get it shared on a news site, guest post site, or even on my own blog.
Content Marketing Vs. Content Writing
These days we hear a lot about content marketing.
You hear the phrase ‘content is king’ thrown about quite a lot. But it’s confusing to understand.
So let’s get down to basics.
What is Content Marketing? It’s the practice of producing consistent, high-quality written, video, audio, and images (all different forms of web content) to educate and engage people who visit your website or social media profile.
Every piece of content a company produces should add value to the people who see it. The more you can help people understand something, give them insider advice, and show them better ways of thinking or doing something, the more they will trust you and your brand.
The ultimate goal of content marketing is to position you and your brand as an expert in your industry.
Content writing is at the core of content marketing because without the words, there is no way that the search engines can understand what your website is about.
The words you post as website content teach the search engine how to understand and rank your site. Written content helps create topic authority on your site, which allows you to dramatically improve your content creation results.
Ideally, you want your brand or business to be the first that a prospective customer thinks of when they have a need your product or service can meet.
When you rank well in the search engine, your website shows up higher in organic results. People are much more likely to trust links on Google that aren’t ads. Consumers believe that organic search results give them relevant and trustable answers compared to advertisements to try to push a product or service.
For this reason, if you have a blog post or digital content (video, audio, image) that is ranking well in the search results, then people are much more likely to click on them.
Content Writing Vs. SEO Content Writing
As a content writer, one of the biggest things you learn is that digital content should walk the fine line between readability and searchability.
Readability means writing in a voice and style that is interesting, engaging, and relatable to your audience. It means using verbiage and terms commonly used by your target audience. Sometimes this requires the skills of a technical writer, but most of the time, a good content writer can mimic or adopt the voice and sensibility of the audience they want to reach.
Searchability is the practice of including strategic keywords and semantic phrases in your original content to help the search engine algorithm understand and rank your website.
Back in the early days of content marketing and SEO, many writers would use the practice of ‘keyword stuffing,’ which is a covert attempt to add as many keywords as possible into an article.
The problem with this type of written content is that nobody wants to read it!
Today, if a website doesn’t appeal to visitors immediately, they will click away within seconds.
For this reason, your web content should be written for a human in a conversational tone. A digital content writer can balance the skill of weaving relevant keywords and search terms while keeping the content piece interesting and entertaining.
How to Become a Content Writer
If you found this article because you’re considering a career as a freelance content writer, then it’s crucial to understand it takes a lot of work to get started.
Even if you have studied writing in school or enjoy creative writing as a hobby, the science of content writing for digital marketing is very different.
You will need to practice writing both for readability and searchability to get started. You might volunteer your time to write a few articles or blog posts for free. Or you can offer cheap content writing rates on content writing job sites like UpWork, Fiver, or Problogger.
The good news is that today there are a ton of free courses on SEO, digital marketing, content marketing, and web copywriting that can help you get started. In addition, there are excellent content marketing books, content marketing podcasts, and content writing forums.
The key is to find a niche, vertical, or industry you are interested in and begin studying it. Then, start writing articles and publishing them on your blog or via a site like Medium or Contently. These sites can act as a portfolio to show your experience and writing skills.
Once you have written ten or so articles, you can start reaching out to businesses or brands in your niche or vertical and ask to write a few articles for free. All you ask in return is the chance to be credited for the work or to get a written testimonial from them.
Within three-to-six months, you can begin charging money for your content writing service and see a return on your efforts.
What Qualifications do you need to be a Content Writer?
The short answer is you need no formal qualifications to be a content writer.
However, you do need some real-world experience.
Business owners you write content for aren’t concerned if you have a degree in writing. Instead, they are interested if you can get them website views and clicks.
As a rule, here are the basics you need to become a content writer:
- Basic writing skills, knowledge of Grammar, etc.
- Industry knowledge or experience
- SEO keyword research skills
- Working knowledge of content management systems
- Proficiency with Microsoft Word, Google docs, and applications such as Grammarly
- A content portfolio of published articles that show experience and writing skills
If you have a background in article writing or creative writing, you have some writing skills that can help speed up your learning curve.
Don’t Wait to Get Paid For Content Writing
The key to becoming a content writer is to get started. If you are hoping to get paid for the first article you write, you might never become a professional content writer.
The reality is that experience counts a lot in the content writing world. By writing a bunch of articles that rank well in the search engines, you can prove to any prospective writing client that you can get results for them.
Content writing as a profession can be a lot of fun. It can be very rewarding. However, it requires you to hone your writing skills, understand the way SEO works, and grow your experience over time.
Take a long-term view of your content writing career, and over time you might also find yourself getting paid to write content for a living.