Make paid exposure your focus for 2018, and you’ll make sure your bills are paid while also raising your profile online.īeats spending hours every month writing for free, and hoping to heck it gets you a gig. I recently published a list of over 160 sites that pay writers. You can get good exposure while getting paid. (Sadly, I think they have followed the now-dead HuffPo model and no longer pay, but there are plenty of paying sites out there.) There are plenty of them.įor several years, a ways back, I was paid $1,200 a month to post three times weekly on - and several good clients approached me from seeing my byline there.
I never really understood the fascination with getting to be a free HuffPo contributor, because there’s a better way to get exposure for your writing online: Post on popular sites that pay instead. If not, those writers are scrambling for new gigs. It’s possible those gigs can be transferred to ghosting for that thought leader on Forbes, Medium, LinkedIn Pulse or somewhere else. Hopefully, that wasn’t their only client. I know writers who were making good money ghosting for thought leaders on HuffPo. Of course, that goes double for paying clients. That remains the best way to make sure you find good clients.
Learn how to make money writing by doing your own, independent, proactive marketing. You don’t want to put too many eggs in one basket - especially a basket you don’t control. Here are seven key action items on how to become a freelance writer as the free HuffPo contributor channel fades away:Įvery time a popular platform changes the rules on us, it’s a good reminder of the importance of having a multi-pronged marketing plan.
There are plenty of ways writers can benefit from these changing tides. Whether you’re happy or sad about the end of free HuffPo content, it’s important to understand what this change signifies in the marketplace.
So it wasn’t all bad.īut in the main, hordes of writers writing for free isn’t good. Yes, a tiny handful of writers seemed to get good clients through their unpaid HuffPo bylines, though the value of HuffPo exposure declined over time.Īnd quite a few writers were earning good money ghostwriting free HuffPo posts for thought leader/speaker/CEO types who didn’t have time to write their own authority-building pieces. The end of unpaid HuffPo articles is part of a trend we’ll likely see more of this year - and I think it’s a good thing. Many writers online have bemoaned the death of free HuffPo posts, but I have a different reaction.
I suppose one has to be squarely in the publication’s readership demographic to find the graphic even remotely humorous.įorgive me if I have a hard time relating to travails of “tardy housekeepers,” “talkative cabbies” or, alas, “gluten.”Ĭurmudgeonly sort that I am, the bit comes across as smarmy and irritating, much like the vast majority of those who read the Huffington Post, or, at least, those who post comments on website material. The above is the Huffington Post’s attempt at humor.