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The Two Best Ways Writers Can Get Paid More for Blog Posts

Carol Tice

hidden moneyDo you think all blog posts pay $10 or less?

I can tell you it’s just not true. Personally, I’ve made as much as $300 a post.

What makes the difference between low-rent blog pay and getting real wages?

There are really just two basic ways that happens.

You deliver traffic for good clients

One is to show you know how to deliver a big audience for companies and publications with real revenue and money to spend developing content. You show them you understand blogging — you can write the sort of headlines that will draw them a huge audience, for starters. You know their audience and the topics they will find must-reads.

This traffic helps them sell more magazines or make more sales. They are happy to pay a few hundred dollars for this — in their marketing budget, blogging is a tiny cost compared to advertising and other marketing activities.

Too many writers waste time with startup or fly-by-night websites with shaky business models and no real money coming in.

Or they don’t know how to write those headlines, or execute a post that will help that top-drawer client.

There’s one other way to get better pay for your blog posts. It’s got even more earning potential.

Your guest post helps you sell

When you write a free guest post on a major blog and link it back to your site, you can sell more of your stuff to this new, larger audience.

This is how most of the big bloggers really make blogging pay.

Rather than worrying about upping their pay rate from $10 to $75 a post or something, they focus on guest posting on the top blogs for free, and creating their own products or services that the post will help people to find.

They usually make thousands on every post, using the post as a marketing tool to sell their thing. The post demonstrates their expertise, then leads people to come purchase more of their knowledge back on their own, smaller blog.

Even better, you’re the boss of the whole operation. You’re in control of what you create and how you deliver it.

You set the deadlines and decide what you’ll write about. You create products you’re passionate about. It’s a great setup.

This month, I’ve made a commitment to pursuing this latter type of blogging more…so I’ll let you know how that experiment works out for me. I have commitments for well more than a dozen different guest posts that will all fall in a short timeframe, across several big blogs that are new for me. Excited to see what that does for the readership here on the blog, and for interest in Freelance Writers Den membership.

But how can you make it happen, you ask? How can you get those better-paying clients, or score posts on top blogs?

On this short, six-minute audio clip, Jon Morrow from Copyblogger and Boost Blog Traffic explains more:

[hana-flv-player video=”https://media.makealivingwriting.com/Den-Headlines-Morrow-Excerpt.mp4″ width=”175″ height=”50″ description=”” player=”2″ autoload=”true” autoplay=”false” loop=”false” autorewind=”false” /]

Can’t make that work? You could download it here (if you disable popup blockers):

https://media.makealivingwriting.com/Den-Headlines-Morrow-Excerpt.mp4

What’s the most you’ve gotten paid for blog posts? Leave a comment and tell us how you earn more.

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The Secret Ingredients to Success in Brand Journalism. Makealivingwriting.com

Do you love traditional freelance journalism but struggle to earn a living? Brand journalism might be a perfect fit for you.

By writing content for companies, you can put your great storytelling skills to work in a growing, lucrative market.

Brands have the budgets and the motivation to pay good writers what they’re worth.

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