10 Great Fantasy Writing Prompts To Help Inspire your Writing Today
Write about a family that is magical but after 400 generations of magic, they birth one unmagical child.
Write a character who is a kleptomaniac (compulsive thief). One day they wake up to realize every object they’ve ever stolen has come to life.
Write about a child who has always blamed their mistakes on an imaginary person. On the child’s 30th birthday, they awake to find this imaginary person they blamed everything on has come to life.
Write about a character who picks up a book written in a language they’ve never heard of before. Strangely, they can read and understand every word.
Write about a country that hasn’t been discovered yet.
Write about a species of bugs that only come above ground once every 1,200 years. Their arrival is completely unexpected, and their intentions are truly sinister.
Your character’s sister mysteriously vanishes. The quest to find her is one that reveals many secrets about the family’s dark past.
The country is in a panic. The reason? Magic, an art lost over 600 years ago, has been discovered in the slums.
While walking in an unknown part of the forest, your character discovers a cave with a strange egg inside. When they visit the egg again, they instead find a baby beast they never knew existed. Now it’s up to them to raise it.
Write about a character that makes a wish on a star. The next day they realize their wish has come true. The bad part? They worded their wish wrong… very, very wrong.
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Great fantasy writing prompts can help you flex your creative skills and improve your writing style. By stepping out of your comfort zone, you may discover that you have found your new passion! You can expand your wheelhouse of imagination by starting with a simple idea and expanding on it. You are the captain AND the navigator and can steer your story in any way you please 🙂
Fantasy writing gives you the freedom to make the story as wild as you want. There are no rules and no limitations. You can create the perfect world, or take the opposite approach and build a world no human could ever survive.
Finding daily writing prompts like these can help overcome writer’s block and get the creative juices flowing!
As long as you can follow your imagination and let your words flow then there is no telling where you and your characters might end up. Half the fun is going on the journey with your characters and no one will help them get there without you. So grab your pencil or laptop and take that first step out their front door that ends with a world of possibilities.
Whether it’s non-fiction or fiction writing prompts, either can work to help a writer break out of the same toolbox they may be working in. Sometimes it can be helpful to find a good writing prompts generator but google and Pinterest work just as well, and Reddit writing prompts too.
Take your time, look up some fun writing prompts, and take the leap. Start writing your own fantasy story today. You can start with one of these prompts, or combine a few. Who knows? You just might be surprised with where you land.
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Sociopaths are hiding everywhere in our society. They are lying through their teeth. They are scamming people daily and feel little to no remorse about it.
If you are writing a story and you want your protagonist or antagonist to be a sociopath you will need to think through some key ideas to make sure they come to life on your page and are interesting and believable to your readers.
# 1. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They are willing to violate the rights of others.
If we want to write a sociopath well, we need to understand their motives.
They enjoy being able to dominate others. They use this desire to justify getting whatever they want from an individual or individuals.
They want their possessions, jobs, businesses, money, fame, family, friends, cars, homes, investments, reputations and more.
Anything of value someone else owns that they don’t have they are willing and will try to dominate someone else for.
They do not see the value in working or taking time to earn these things for themselves. They would much rather take it from someone else and avoid the work if at all possible.
Any rights someone has the sociopath is more than willing to violate to take these things from someone else and they may even feel as though they deserve it and the possessor does not, because they believe they are smarter than anyone else. They are extreme Narcissists.
They may have the knowledge that such behavior is wrong, but they will not empathize with anyone so they will not think about what it is like to have things taken from them. They are just thinking of getting what they can get out of the relationship.
Example: A sociopath is extremely likely to use blackmail as a mode to take from others what they want from them. Blackmail is an easy way to hold power over someone else and get them to do what your sociopath wants, “or else.”
# 2.8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They love the feeling of dominating others just to feel powerful.
While some sociopaths want something from you and are willing to violate your rights to get it, the worst sociopaths want something even more sinister.
They want you just so they can feel the power of dominating you.
This type of sinister sociopath can be hiding in a cheerleader outfit giving commands to the cheer troop and bullying girls they feel threatened by.
The sociopath that loves the feeling of dominating people can be hiding in any authoritative role.
They could be a teacher enjoying commanding students to do whatever project they throw at them or a police officer pulling unsuspecting victims over just to show them how powerless they are.
They may be your boss at work. Any time you have an idea that could threaten their dominance they will consider you a threat and make sure your idea never makes it anywhere or they will find a way to steal your idea and rub it in your face when the opportunity comes.
# 3. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: Sociopaths lack a conscience.
Sociopaths have no little to absolutely no conscience.
Don’t expect them to feel bad for anything they are doing to get ahead. If you start to feel like one may like you or is helping you think again, they are only doing completely selfish things.
In fact, if your character has a sociopath helping them they better watch out.
Any favors your sociopath does for anyone else they are tallying it all up. “You owe me.” is their life mantra.
Example: Your sociopath comes to their manager and notifies the manager that an employee is stealing. The manager fires the employee and praises and awards the sociopath with a small raise and more hours around their schedule.
The sociopath feels as though they earned the raise and helped the manager at the same time, therefore the manager “still owes” the sociopath something.
The Sociopath asks the manager to be paid to take off Friday so they can hang out with a friend. The manager thinks this is ridiculous and politely says “that won’t work.”
The sociopath is confused and says “but I helped you with the thief, you owe me.”
The manager thinks this is also a strange notion. It is way outside the social norms of the professional workplace. “I don’t owe you anything. You did your job. I didn’t even have to get you that raise and more hours.”
This will inevitably infuriate the greedy sociopath and they will be out for revenge as they have been “slighted” by the manager. The sociopath would be fuming, “how dare they treat me this way, after all I’ve done for them.”
That manager will soon be finding some problems in the workplace or even more sinister, at home because they unwittingly slighted the sociopath hiding in their office.
# 4. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They are fast talkers.
They are schemers and along with that scheming, they will be plotting and practicing self-made scripts for the people that they have to “deal” with on a daily basis to get what they want.
This type of methodically planning and plotting can make them fast talkers.
They will be thinking about how to get away with their mission and goals.
They are quick to opt-out for fabricating rather than earning the truth and what it brings them.
Watch out for fast stories with big plans and big moves. If your sociopath is talking fast your character can look a little into their real life and see that there are no real plans, just a lot of fast talk.
They LOVE to use powerful phrases that are COMPLETELY EMPTY on their end: “I love you. I will never hurt you. If you do this for me I will pay you back tomorrow. Believe me. I’ll give you the world, just do as I say.”
They also will use negative words to control you and manipulate your characters: “I never thought you would hurt me so badly, you can make it up to me by buying me lunch. You’ve been a terrible employee, mop the floors tonight and I’ll think about letting it slide. I would never lie to you, but here you are deceiving me.”
They find a way to turn everything around on your other characters and they are never wrong in their own minds.
# 5. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They will say and do whatever they need to for the moment.
They will do and say whatever they need to, this will make them a bit of a chameleon, changing their colors and stripes for the “needed” situation.
They know that one of your characters is easily manipulated by flattery so they will flatter that one when they are around them.
But at the drop of a hat when they encounter a cowardly character that they know they can manipulate with threats they will instantly become mean and threatening, threatening to not be that character’s friend anymore if they don’t do what they say.
# 6. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: A sociopath will make your other characters feel certain emotions.
Your character may see some red flags about the sociopath. It could be a school mate that at first seems extremely friendly, but then in a moment, the character feels oddly threatened by them.
To write an interesting sociopath they have an extreme energy and are able to charm people quickly.
They can easily sweep your character off their feet, only to find out they are in a grave situation just a little too late.
They can make an amazing impression at a job interview only get the job and later cause a giant mess.
They take advantage of people’s sympathy. Your character could be well-meaning and be duped by the sociopath into given them too much too quickly.
Your sociopath will find a way to blame anyone and anything above their own willful choices if your character confronts them, and don’t forget they are chronic liars. And they will always look for a way to make you feel bad in the process.
Example: “I would have paid you back but my mom needed the money to pay for her groceries. I’ll pay you back next week.” “I was going to pick you up from school but the dog used the bathroom on the carpet. That dog that you just had to have, now get in there and clean it up.” “I would have come to your recital but traffic was so bad that it made me so late that I came back home instead.”
# 8. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They like to target certain people.
Sociopaths either target people they know they can get things from or people that engage with them.
If your character fights back the sociopath will feed off this and will continue to act cruelly toward them.
Your sociopath will also go after characters that they can get an emotional reaction from. They will be disinterested in characters that don’t seem to be affected by them, but they will hone in on those that they can make angry or afraid. Both emotional reaction they are stimulated by.
If you enjoy Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
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Common! I don’t have all day! Pick up your weapon and face me!
He hates me! I knew it!
I didn’t know what to do so I hid in the bathroom and prayed!
I had never seen anything so beautiful!
The treasure glimmered in the firelight and reflected in her eyes.
Where were you last night?
Why am I the only one that thinks this is insane?
Tell me again, were there two of you or four of you?
I told him I could only give him a ride a couple of miles down the road, but when he pulled a gun on me I said, where do you need to go? He was pretty polite after that.
If you enjoy Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
You might be wondering, “Why aren’t my emails getting opened and read?”
Hopefully, with this list, you will get better open rates and more people reading and clicking your emails in no time.
You can’t just send your list anything.
You have to know your list and know their problems so you can send them something they are interested in reading.
If you are trying to tell your list about great kitchen products, don’t just tell them about how great the item is.
Make sure to say what PROBLEMS the item solves.
Things to think about when creating emails that will get open and read:
Put your best foot forward.
Who are you writing to?
What will make them open the email?
Tell me about my problem, not your product
Make your text easy to skim through
#1 Put Your Best Foot Forward
First impressions are extremely powerful.
In all aspects of life if you give a bad first impression it is unlikely the person will give you a second chance.
This is escalated with email. If you land in their inbox with junky info or annoying them…unsubscribe, delete, done, bye.
The same goes for a good first impression.
If you give a great first impression, but mess up later on down the road, they are likely to give you a 2nd and maybe even a third or fourth chance before they hit the DREADED unsubscribe!
Use this knowledge to your advantage.
When you have 1st-time subscribers, make sure to welcome them and give them something SO AMAZING that they’ll be looking forward to your next email with excitement.
Give them a reason to want to open every email and keep you in their inbox for years to come. But the first opened email is one of the most important.
If you want your list to look forward to seeing your emails in their inbox then you need to know them.
What are their doubts, worries, and fears?
Go to forums, FaceBook groups, and places like Amazon reviews to see what your audience has to say and think about products like yours and the problems they are facing right now.
Try to notice patterns in what they say and do your best to use wording and phrasing the same way the majority does.
This will help you resonate with most of your audience and they will be thinking “It’s like you read my mind!” “You must have the answer to my problems!”
If you can resonate with them, they will likely try your product or listen to you and if you solve their problem the first time, they will very likely come back for more.
#3 What will make more people open the email?
How do you get potential readers to open your emails?
Make sure you are capturing the RIGHT audience. If your lead magnet is drawing in people that care about blogging and you’re trying to tell them about cars, you aren’t going to get many openings.
Focus on your headline. Create email headlines that make people curious and have a promise to make their life better if they open it.
Use stories. As humans, we are obsessed with stories. If you can promise a good story with an open, you are much more likely to get it.
Think about what questions you can answer for them.
VERY IMPORTANT: IF you make a promise to deliver an answer to a problem, MAKE SURE YOU DELIVER. Clickbait will get good openings once, but after that, you are the boy who cried wolf, no one will listen to you.
If you want to get your emails read you need to make sure that you know what your subscribers’ problems are.
Once you know their problems, you can talk about their problem and tell them about the solution to their problem.
If you talk to them about their problem and you are spot on they will read on or skim through to find an answer.
Only highlight the benefits of your product after you’ve covered all their potential problems.
Change your mindset. Right now you are thinking, “how can I get them to buy this product?”
That’s the wrong question.
You should be asking, “What are the problems this product solves for my reader?”
Spend most of your time writing to them about their problemsand then you can tell them about how your item, service, or product solves their problems and they are going to read and be curious.
It is great at this point if you can tell them how the product solved your problems or if you have customer testimonies to talk about how it solved their problems.
If you are able to do this effectively and they don’t seem to be interested, maybe it’s time to upgrade the product or make sure you have captured the right email audience.
#5 Make your email text simple and readable.
This should be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many emails get opened and skipped because the content was too much and too “blocky” for the recipient to even want to try to read, let alone get any enjoyment out of.
Make your email text readable by creating 1 to 2 sentences per paragraph, instead of creating a BIG BLOCK of text.
Which is easier to read?:
I went for a walk. It was nice. I saw a dog and a cat and my next door neighbor. I said hi and they said hi. It was a nice walk on a sunny day. The temperature wasn’t too hot or too cold. While I was walking I saw a snail. The snail said hi, I said hi back. It was clear that he didn’t want to see me, so I quickly walked on. I almost stepped on him, but I didn’t, I’m glad I didn’t as his mother might have sued. I’m glad I didn’t get sued on my morning walk on the nice warm sun shiny day in October.
Or this:
I went for a walk. It was nice. I saw a dog and a cat and my next door neighbor. I said hi and they said hi.
It was a nice walk on a sunny day. The temperature wasn’t too hot or too cold.
While I was walking, I saw a snail. The snail said hi, I said hi back. It was clear that he didn’t want to see me, so I quickly walked on.
I almost stepped on him, but I didn’t, I’m glad I didn’t as his mother might have sued.
I’m glad I didn’t get sued on my morning walk on the nice warm sun shiny day in October.
Use this technique and pla around with it to create emails that are easy on their eyes, easy to skim, and easy to read.
You should make your writing easy to skim and lead them to what you want by using Bold, Italics, underlining and colored text.
By making certain text pop out you can draw their eyes to the main things you want them to read.
Take and use these 5 email marketing tips and get more opens and reads with your emails.
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
What “Detective Pikachu” Can Teach Us About Exciting Effective Writing Prompts: Spoiler Alert!
What’s ahead in exciting effective writing prompts:
Begin your story with a good hook.
Make every second count
Don’t try to catch them all
Keep them guessing
Don’t push the twist
If you haven’t seen Detective Pikachu yet, I recommend it. It was family friendly and one of the best gaming movies made yet.
The writers of the movie did a good job using exciting effective writing prompts in the screenwriting.
How can writing in a movie help with your writing overall?
The simple answer is stories.
Good stories make for great exciting effective writing prompts, blogging, and copywriting.
If you learn how to use storytelling in all of your writing niches you will immediately be a better writer and see better results.
Begin Your Story With a Good Hook
At the very beginning of the movie we see Mewtwo bust out of science facility and shoot energy at a car and explode it.
At this point, we as an audience are waiting with curiosity to see why he did this.
Here’s where good writing comes in.
Instead of revealing anything right then the movie changes scenes and we are left curious to find out what happens.
You can call this is a hook.
If you can add a good hook to your blog post or writing prompt (especially marketing material), this will help your readers stay curious and want to know more about what you are saying.
This will keep them curious and engaged in your writing instead of zoning out while reading your material.
Make Every Second Count in Your Writing Prompt
In the movie, they don’t waste time with meaningless scenes or time to just roll the film.
In the same way, you shouldn’t waste words or sentences that don’t carry your reader to the next sentence of your writing prompt.
Write a sentence and make it count.
If it doesn’t make the reader curious about what is coming after it, consider revising it or cutting it out altogether.
Lead them to your next scene or idea.
Don’t Try To Catch Them All
Something I found humorous and entertaining about the main character of the movie is that he didn’t like pokemon.
People in his society considered him to be an oddball because he didn’t have his own pokemon companion and didn’t bother with trying to catch them all.
In like manner, with your writing prompt, you shouldn’t try to catch every person that could come across your writing or blog.
You should aim for the right people for your niche.
Try to resonate with your specific audience and don’t worry about pleasing everyone.
Just be sure to entertain the right people and your following will grow.
Throw out too many pokeballs and you might just lose followers in the process.
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Detective Pikachu does a good job of keeping you guessing.
You’re not sure if the main bad guy is the father or the son.
There’s even a moment when you think Pikachu may have betrayed his owner.
This is great writing.
If you are able to keep your audience guessing in a good way then you can make your writing prompts much better.
Keep them in suspense. Keep them on their toes. Keep them on the edge of their seats waiting for your big reveal.
BEWARE: when you are writing in a way to create curiosity don’t overdo it.
Any questions you create for your readers you must answer them and deliver on the questions you make.
If you make too many questions and don’t answer enough of them you leave your readers feeling tricked or duped. This is a bad strategy.
They did all that work reading through your material and then never found out what they were looking for.
Don’t to that to them. Just don’t!
Don’t Push the Twist in Your Writing Prompts
A good twist is never forced.
Do your best to make it natural.
In Detective Pikachu, the twist would have been more predictable but at the last minute they tricked you with a Ditto pokemon clone of the son which made you think, “well I guess he really is the bad guy.”
But they kept the Ditto a secret until the big reveal.
That was their big trick and they did a good job keeping it from the audience.
They didn’t tell you there was a Ditto and they didn’t let you know that it could turn into humans and this made for the perfect way to hide the twist and the true villain.
You also need to figure out ways to create a good twist and don’t force it in your writing prompts.
Find new and innovative ways to hide the BIG SECRET that is the key to unlocking your suspenseful BIG REVEAL.
Look for great writing prompts in all the content you see, read, review, and take in every day.
It may be lunch with a friend, or something your child says to you.
Creativity is in abundance all around us, we just have to train ourselves to be looking for it and grab it when it comes.
Be sure to keep an eye out for great material and inspiring ideas whether you are watching a movie or reading a great writing prompt.
Did you get exciting effective writing prompts idea while reading this post?
Have you seen Detective Pikachu, how did you react? How did your kids react?
What movie have you seen lately that made you think of great exciting effective writing prompts?
What exciting effective Writing Prompts can you come up with?
5 Exciting Effective Writing Prompts From the movie “Detective Pikachu”
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, here are some Other Post You Might Love:
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
How to make money blogging: 11 simple steps to start blogging for money
How to make money blogging:
Through affiliate links
Sponsorships
How to make money blogging through ads
Make money blogging through digital products
Through a membership subscription site
Use your blog to make money through clients
How to make money blogging through reviews
Drive traffic to your site
Choose a blog host
Choose a blog domain name
Choose your blogging platform
1. Make money blogging with affiliate links
Many bloggers make a decent living by using affiliate links on their blog sites.
An affiliate link is a website link in their post that when clicked on and used pays out money.
Affiliate links can pay out for several reasons:
Payout for a purchase through the link (most common)
Payout for signing up for something
Payout for clicks (uncommon)
Payout for taking certain action through the link
A good example of a company that pays out for a purchase would be Bluehost. They have an affiliate program that pays out a decent commission when someone uses your link to buy their web hosting service.
A sponsorship is basically when a company hires you to do a specific post or campaign for them on your blog. They pay you an agreed amount to make the post and promote it. It is another way for companies to use your blog to advertise to their ideal customers.
Expect to get sponsorships after creating heavy traffic to your blog consistently.
Getting sponsorships is closely related to getting freelance work, but you’re not gonna get a sponsorship without a blog or a large social following.
If you want to look for sponsorships to monetize your blog you are going to need to create more traffic to your blog through social media and SEO.
3. Make money blogging with ads
Ads is an easy simple no brainer way of making money with your blog.
If you generate traffic daily, there is no reason for you not to have a few ads making you extra money.
Ads work when you get views and clicks. The amount of money you make per view or per click is completely up to the program you sign up with.
There are program stipulations you need to be aware of for each program. Some are more lenient than others, but some won’t accept your application if you don’t have enough site views.
It might not be a good money maker starting out, but if you have a decent flow of traffic it can be a very passive income as you just set the ads on your page and that’s all you really have to do. After that, the amount you make really depends on your traffic.
Be aware that having ads on your page can slow your page down and some readers will not stay as long based on the ads getting in the way of your good content.
Also, be sure to communicate with your ad program and know how many ads they are going to add to your pages and how that will affect your traffic.
4. Sell digital products on your blog
At some point along your blogging journey you may decide it’s time to make your own informational products and promote them on your site.
You can make:
Ebooks
Online Courses
Books
Guides
PDFs
Subscription memberships
Online Courses are doing very well right now and if you want to make more as a blogger than this might be a great route to head next.
With an Online Course your skills in blogging, writing, and communication can transfer very well.
I’ve taken online courses that are mostly videos, some that are mostly writing, and some that are a great mixture of the two.
It doesn’t really matter what medium you choose to focus on as long as you deliver AMAZING content that changes people’s lives when they purchase it and learn from it. That’s at least how I feel as someone that purchases online courses.
5. How to make money blogging through a membership subscription site
Membership sites are like FB groups on steroids. Some are FB groups that are made private until you subscribe. Or you can include private FB groups in your online courses as well.
Either way you want to have continual posts in your membership community that daily move the group forward and creates TONS of worthwhile information for your memberships to want to be a part of.
The key to making great consistent money through a membership subscription is that once someone tries it they have the feeling that there is valuable information they’ll be missing out on if they lose access to it.
At that point, you can grow a consistent monthly income from the members only site alone.
Any membership site can have churn out, but the more you are able to have a consistent valuable discussion going on and add value to the group weekly and monthly the less churn out should be.
6. Use your blog to get paying clients
If you like working with people more than just writing than you will absolutely love finding clients to work for.
Client work is challenging. You have to know how to get what is in their minds onto your page.
Some great tips for landing clients on the first try:
Decide beforehand to ask good quality questions
Know which questions you are going to ask before the interview
Treat the client like a friend you are having coffee with
Listen intently
Repeat Important information back to the client and they will feel understood and that you care
Listen more than you talk
When you hear them state their problem, be sure to address how you are going to solve it
Doing well with clients means being a good communicator and serving the client.
If you don’t like that idea then client work might not be for you.
Freelance writing is 50% working on communication with clients and 50% writing.
That ebbs and flows given the client and the freelance writing you are doing for them, but just know that writing for clients is not purely writing like blogging for yourself, it takes a lot of communication skills.
Reviews are a great way to share with your readers what you think about a product or service.
What’s better than getting to try amazing new products and then getting to tell people about them?!
It’s nice because you can be honest in a review and just say what you like and what you don’t and you don’t really feel like you’re selling anything to anyone.
After you share your honest thoughts on it, you leave it up to your readers to make a good choice and get the product or not.
Reviews are an easy way to make money as a blogger.
8. Drive traffic to your site
Blogging isn’t ALL writing.
A good amount of the work you will put into any successful blog will be promotion and figuring out ways to get eyeballs looking at your site.
You have to drive traffic and keep traffic. Both can be difficult and have different but key strategies.
Driving traffic is a mixture of using social media to spread the word about valuable information and products on your site and using SEO best practices.
Keeping traffic is about setting up promotions to your blog that turn into LONG LASTING sources of traffic.
Long lasting traffic comes from strategic guest posts and automated or manual social media systems you set up.
9. Choose a blog host
If you want to make money blogging you will have to get blog hosting and own your own domain.
Ad networks and affiliate programs won’t work with you unless you own your website and clients most likely won’t take you seriously if you send them to a free blog page.
Kinsta is more expensive, but you pay for what you get. Their hosting creates faster site speeds which leads to better SEO and is better for sites that have high amounts of traffic.
Choose your blogging platform. You should take a few moments to understand the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.
Understand that they are not the same and they are vastly different in user friendliness depending on how you want to make your site and the versatility of what you might be looking to monetize with it.
Just a couple things, wordpress.com doesn’t allow you to use free plugins but wordpress.org has a massive amount of free plugins to help you make your blog everything you want it to be.
I personally use WordPress.org. So far I like it and I REALLY enjoy the resources and the free plugins I can use.
Overall, there are many strategies to making money with your blog and I would definitely recommend doing a little bit of everything.
You should definitely do your best to diversify your blogging income then if one doesn’t work out you have more to rely on.
I would also suggest working on one or two at a time. Focus in on one form of income and make it work really well. After you nail down one or two forms of blogging income you will feel ready to get another one working for you.
Did I miss any blogging forms of income?
What income do you like best?
What income works the best for you?
What is the easiest way you have made money blogging?
How to Know What Your Readers are Thinking: What Do They REALLY Want?
When you are writing any type of copy, know what your readers are thinking and what they desire. It’s a BIG DEAL!
It’s important to take time to think about this every time you sit down to write, but especially when blogging, freelancing, and doing client work.
What do you need to ask yourself when sitting down to write to know what your readers are thinking?
Here are some profitable questions to ask yourself:
What is my brand?
What products are you using and love?
What are other writers in your niche writing about and promoting?
Did you Google it yet?
What is going viral in your niche?
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What Is My Brand?
To know what your readers are thinking, you need to understand who you are as a brand.
This may seem like backward thinking, but in order to know who you are attracting with your writing, you need to know who you are.
And it may be obvious to you what your branding is, but you’d be surprised how many blogs and websites are unsuccessful because they are a cluttered mess of every affiliate offer and ad under the sun.
You may be thinking, I need to cast a wide net to get more.
BEWARE of this common MARKETING TRAP!
Stay true to who you are and who you are writing to. Loyalty to your readers is more important. By maintaining a straightforward voice and being open about who you are and who you are writing to from day one you will start to build a loyal audience instead of a fair-weather audience that is not connected to what you do.
The big question you need to be asking yourself is WHY?
Why do I do what I do and why should anyone else care?
If you don’t know your “why,” you will communicate that to your readers without even thinking about it.
Your why will help you focus down and see a clear path from where you are to where you want to be.
Do you want readers to come to you because they are looking for a certain product?
Are they looking for information from you? What type of information? Get specific.
If your why is “I want to make money selling people something.” You probably won’t gain much traction or sell anything for that matter. So you are going to have to be a bit deeper than just “selling stuff.” (This isn’t always true as we have places like Amazon. It is probably pretty hard to compete in that space though.)
Try to have an important purpose. Something only you can help readers do or learn. In the process of trying to help them first instead of yourself, you will find helpful products to tell people about what they will enjoy and they will come back to you to find out more.
And when you do your best to help them succeed in their goals that will, in turn, help you succeed as well.
He’s an inspirational speaker and a thought leader on marketing and branding. I have gotten a lot of inspiration and ideas from his talks.
To know what your readers are thinking, know: Why do you do what you do?
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What Products are You Using and Enjoying Yourself?
To know what your readers are thinking you need to analyze what you like personally and the type of personalities you want to attract with your writing.
If you are writing about something you love and enjoy already in your daily life, it’ll be easy to see if your audience will love to use it too.
For me personally, I love finding things that save me money passively in my daily life, I wrote a post about it and actually found out that most of the things I enjoy using daily have referral offers and affiliate programs. I have no problem promoting them because I love them and save hundreds of dollars using them every year anyway, so I hope that others will be able to save hundreds every year by using them too. And ALL of them don’t cost money to start using which is convenient, because everyone likes FREE 🙂
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What are Other Writers in Your Niche Writing About and Promoting?
To know what your readers are thinking, analyze what other writers are having success with.
The last thing you want to do is copy someone else’s work. Don’t do that; not classy and not worth it. But taking time to look at other blogs that are succeeding in your subject area can really help give you some ideas of what similar readers to yours like, want to hear about, and want to use. It never hurts to look outside the box for help.
Don’t hesitate to look outside yourself for help and inspiration.
Buy some books, take some online courses and invest in yourself.
There is TONS of good free info out there, thanks to bloggers, YouTubers, and influencers, so there is no excuse not to be able to find what readers are interested in hearing about.
If you enjoy Know What Your Readers are Thinking, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: Did you Google it yet?
To know what your readers are thinking, Google it. Period.
Google is a writer’s best friend. I don’t care if you have a human best friend. It’s not true. Google is actually your best friend, you just don’t know it yet. Whether it’s using google analytics to see why people visit your site or whether you are Google researching if you haven’t used Google yet you are leaving valuable insight out of the equation.
Some simple things to search for:
Forums
Reviews
Competitors in your niche
“Your niche” affiliate program
Go out there and see first hand what readers like yours are ACTUALLY saying. This will be gold for your Brand.
Most times when you are staring at a blank page and wondering, “What do I write next?” It’s because you haven’t done enough research.
You’ll be shocked to see how quickly words fly onto your page with a simple Google search. Do your best to stay original while doing your inspirational research.
And definitely take the time to search google’s keyword planner to see what users are typing into their search engines.
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What is Going Viral in Your Niche?
To know what your readers are thinking, check out what is going viral in your niche.
Go on social media platforms and see what pins and posts have and are going viral.
Seeing what’s going viral in your genre can help you decide on what you should write about or promote on your next blog post.
Maybe it will inspire you to write a post on something you haven’t thought about yet.
Or maybe you’ll discover that something you already use and love is going viral. If you know it’s going viral you can know what your readers are thinking and then you can quickly punch out a quick meaningful post on why you love it so much and why your readers might enjoy it too.
Know What Your Readers Are ThinkingBonus: When finding out what your readers are thinking, the gold is in their OWN words.
To know what your readers are thinking, find their own words and write in the way they talk.
The best places to find your readers’ own words are in forums, FB groups, and product reviews.
Start with something simple.
For example: Let’s say you are promoting hair straighteners.
Look on Amazon (I can’t tell how many bloggers miss this key opportunity) for hair straighteners just like yours and start mining the reviews.
You should be looking for patterns.
Look for phrases and statements that are common among many of the comments.
You read 100 reviews and you start to see that many reviews are saying “I love how this straightener doesn’t burn my head.” BOOM.
You just discovered 2 things.
A common problem is that people burn their heads with other straighteners.
The one you’re looking at on amazon solves that problem.
If you write in a hair product niche it will be helpful for you to tell your readers about this straightener, (maybe try it out yourself first) and you can feel confident to say “this straightener is great because it doesn’t burn your head easily like others” knowing full well that your statement will resonate with a lot of what your readers and potential readers are thinking about and by providing useful trustworthy information you will build good rapport with them.
You can do this type of research with any product and any niche to know what your readers are thinking. You just have to find where they are talking about what you are trying to write about and look for common repeated problems and solutions.
Rinse and repeat this type of word research for any product or niche.
What is your blog about?
How are you finding out what your readers are thinking about and want to hear?
Do you need help finding out what they want to read?
Do you need help finding the right words or phrases for your niche?
If you enjoy Know What Your Readers are Thinking, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Know What Your Readers are Thinking, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
It is the Amazon you love, for work. Make workplace procurement easier with convenient delivery options, simplified purchasing workflows, multiple payment options, and a competitive marketplace with business-only pricing and quantity discounts. Anyone who makes purchases for work (eg. procurement specialists, office administration, IT departments, etc.) can create a FREE account for their business. Customer must be from a verified business in order to successfully create their Amazon Business account.
You are definitely wondering how to use affiliate marketing to make more money online.
It may sound confusing, but it is actually very very simple.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is promoting a product, service, or company with a web link and getting paid for clicks, sign-ups, and purchases from the link they give you.
It really is as simple as that. I promise.
All you have to do is find a company that has an affiliate program, and apply to their program.
They provide the link (most of the time, Amazon actually has you pick a product and then makes the link for you) and usually have a place for you to sign in and check out how your link is working.
How Do I Actually Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
That’s a good question.
There are many ways to go about it.
You can make your own Blog and use what you write to promote affiliate products.
You can promote on your social media such as Pinterest, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. (There are rules and restrictions to posting affiliate links on certain social channels so be sure to check with each one before posting anything they would deem against their rules.)
You can build an email list of happy subscribers and tell them about products you like to use with affiliate links.
You can write a blog post today and contact a well-known blogger and ask them to feature your blog post on their site.
Any way you can think of getting your link in front of the eyes of internet readers and users is a way to make money with affiliate links (you have to follow the affiliate program’s rules.)
Why Would a Company Want to Use me as an Affiliate Marketer?
A lot of companies love using affiliates for marketing their products these days.
Back in the day before blogging and social media they had to pay BIG ADVERTISING FEES and weren’t guaranteed any return on their investment.
Whereas with you promoting a product, they don’t have to pay out the commission fee to you unless the product actually sells or they get an actual lead from your promotion. So it’s a win-win situation for them and you 🙂
Side note: Something I personally love about affiliate marketing compared to making and selling your own products is you don’t have to deal with returns or customer service.
You get to make some extra cash while you’re sleeping and not worry about the customer complaints or returned items.
If you enjoy How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Enjoying How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing? Consider sharing this social-friendly image.
Is Affiliate Marketing All Fun and Games?
Of course not!
There are ups and downs to all kinds of work.
Example: I had a friend that got paid by his company to go to theme parks regularly. I’m talking weekly getting paid to go to Busch Gardens and Scuba Diving in Florida.
I thought, “Dude! That’s amazing! What a sweet gig!”
He said, “Well yeah it would be except that I’m always going as the liaison or glorified tour guide for the company so I’m always there with people I don’t know or am working for.”
I can think of many worse ways to get paid, but the point is there are ups and downs to every job.
So in the same way, affiliate marketing can be tough and it is hard to get started, but once you wake up to check your account, or you get done watching netflix and see that you made a few bucks while you were doing it, and realize how many ways you can scale this, it can be a great side hustle or even make a living from.
For me, it’s being around friends and family more and working from my couch while watching a movie with my wife. Or quitting work at 12 pm because my friend invited me to a movie and in the back of my mind knowing that I’m making a living for my family while spending time with my friends.
Of course there are days where you feel ZERO motivation.
That happens to everyone.
You can either push yourself on days like that or say, “Hey, I’m gonna go outside and get some exercise throwing a ball with my dog and if I feel like making some post later this evening, great, no worries.”
It’s days like that I can’t believe I get to do what I am doing and I feel so grateful.
What Companies Offer Affiliate Marketing?
There are LOTS.
You have but to only do a google search:
“(product/service) affiliate program” and you will see many of great choices.
Make sure that you check out the programs for legitimacy.
And be sure to understand the program’s terms and rules so that you don’t lose your account with them prematurely.
What is the Best Way to Make the Most of Affiliate Links?
Choose products that you are personally interested in. It’ll be easier to write about and it’ll be more natural. Trust me, your readers will be able to tell.
Find the right products for you and your readers. Do online research. Most companies that have affiliate programs are looking for more affiliates. The cost of advertising through affiliates is low for them.
Be relevant for your readership: this seems like a no-brainer, but it’s laughable the amount of weird stuff you can find blogs trying to products that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what they are writing about.
Be up to date: take time every so often to edit and revise your older posts.
MOST IMPORTANT: I feel like this doesn’t need to be said, but bloggers everywhere prove me wrong all the time. Write about and promote what your readers want! For affiliate marketing, if you want to make money and get clicks, promote and write about things that your audience is interested in. Take time to figure this out and make it a regular priority for you.
Focus on quality over quantity. Products that usually end up working out badly for others will cause your readers a bad time too and they won’t trust you for other products. So pick products that are good quality and give whoever tries them a good experience and they’ll come back to you for more and be grateful for your input.
Focus on products that will be interesting to your audience, not products that just sell in general.
Don’t be afraid to find products that are similar and review, compare, and contrast.
Find affiliate networks and look at the resources they offer to affiliates to help them get more sales and clicks.
Use services like Hubspot and Google Analytics to see what’s going on in your market. Facts about what your audience is looking up and reading about are more beneficial than what you imagine they want to hear.
Research, research, research. Do your homework.
Compare commission rates and talk to your affiliate managers about upping your rates when you’re doing well.
Talk to your affiliate managers about doing sales exclusively for your readership.
Keep an eye out for discount codes to share with your followers.
Make the best use of the available affiliate networks. Through the networks, many programs and products are available to promote. Make sure you look through these and take advantage of what they have to offer. Searching through Affiliate Networks will help give you ideas you may never have thought of.
If you enjoy How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Update Bonus: 21 Shocking Writing Prompts to start writing your next book or short story optimized Quick Pinterest Pin at the bottom of the Page.
6+ Easy Practical Steps to Becoming a Better Writer in 30 Days or Less
Follow these strategies below and you will most assuredly be a better writer than when you started.
Whether you want to become a technical writer, a ghostwriter, a TV writer, a travel writer, or just learn how to write your essays better, these tips should prove helpful.
Becoming a better writer isn’t difficult, but it absolutely takes a solid discipline.
As with most things the more hardcore you go with these strategies, the more you’ll get out of it.
6+ Easy Practical Steps to Becoming a Better Writer in 30 Days or Less:
There are plenty of good sites to start blogging today for free, wordpress.org being one of them and they allow you to use free plugins as well compared to wordpress.com.
Disclaimer: You can always start a “free” blog, but the terms of use for free sites is that they can shut it down for any reason (at ANY TIME). So it’s possible to randomly lose all your hard work on a free blog. Be careful.
So just a fair warning, you can use free blogging, but I haven’t had much success with it personally. I started many free blogs and none of them stuck. This is the only one I’ve paid for and I’m glad I did. And it is the only one that I continue working with.
If you want to start a legitimate blog or if you think you might try to monetize it one day you are eventually going to need a hosting site.
I personally use Bluehost. They made getting my blog started EXTREMELY easy and their ‘one-click’ WordPress.org setup was ridiculously smooth.
Bluehost is one of the top web hosting companies in 2020. You can start your own blog with them for as low as $3.95 a month (on the page you’ll see that they say it is normally $7.99, but I’ve never seen them try to get anyone to start for that.) The $3.95 sale price only comes with their 36-month plan. I use them and that’s what I did and I’m happy about it. ( I did the 36-month plan and so far we are still happy with it 🙂 )
Sign up them and you can also get your domain free if you purchase a 12 month or longer hosting plan (that’s worth $15). As I said, we did the 36-month plan because it was the best deal but you can choose any plan. If you’re not planning on monetizing your blog it might be a good idea to start with a free blog.
I can tell you from personal experience that a free blog won’t motivate you to write as much as paying for a blog, but it’s up to you to decide what works best for your unique situation. If you really love blogging you never know when you might decide to monetize and at that moment you’ll be happy you decided to host with Bluehost and owning your domain.
Having your own site looks more professional to affiliate programs and readers. You will be able to have a better following, no one can shut you down for no reason (like on a free blog) and at any moment you will be able to monetize through ads and affiliate programs.
Some of my blogging mentors had their blogs going for years before they decided to monetize. You just never know.
At the same time, you can always start a free blog to test things out and buy a domain name and hosting later, but there is no guarantee the price will still be as good and no guarantee that the domain name you love will still be available.
Do what’s best for you and your specific situation 🙂
For me personally, I started with Bluehost and WordPress.org right from the start because I enjoy work from home and being my own boss. As far as online jobs and work, blogging is one way to pay yourself and work when you want.
If you want to reasons why it’s a good idea to start a blog, you can check out this post here:Why Start a Blog
If you are interested in more details on how to make a great blog from scratch you can see this post: How to Become a Blogger in 2019
2. Read about writing every day
Good writers all have certain traits in common. One of them is that they read A LOT.
Most of them read every day. Now I won’t say that I’m a good writer that’s up to others to decide, but I do read mostly every day.
You might be thinking “but you probably grew up reading as a kid and loved it.” Not true! I personally couldn’t stand reading and writing growing up. Hated reading with a passion actually.
It actually wasn’t until I got into college that I really started to read and then probably a couple of years into it that I started to enjoy it.
So you don’t have to be some kind of savant to get started in writing. You just have to have drive and discipline.
But this type of reading isn’t just reading at first. It is specifically looking to read about writing (I know, it sounds boring and it can be tedious but the foundational knowledge will help in the long run). During your becoming a better writer in just 30 days, you will want to be keen to read and learn about writing, especially if you want to do writing online or freelance writing.
Try to read things that help you get to where you want to go. If you want to become a blogger read about blogging tips and tricks. < (I googled it for you)
If you want to become a ghostwriter, read about how to become a ghostwriter. (Pssst! What’s a ghostwriter? A ghostwriter is a writer that gets paid to write something for someone but doesn’t own the project. For example, a person could hire you to write a novel for them, but they get to publish it as the author. They paid for it and own all the rights to it and you are just the ghostwriter.)
It’s just one way to get paid to write.
If you want to be a technical writer, read about the best practices of technical writers. As long as you are willing to read the right things you can learn to write anything 🙂 there really is nothing holding you back.
Look up blogs, articles, look at the library for books on writing. Depending on what type of writing you want to pursue will be very important to the writing that you read about.
As you get a good idea of a foundation for the type of writing you want to do, you can start to branch out studying other types of writing. You will see how understanding the why’s and what’s and styles behind them all can help you in your pursuit of becoming a better writer.
Look on Amazon for great reads on writing. I personally recommend these ones for when you need to think outside the traditional box or when you get bored of reading about writing:
These are non-traditional and will help open up your mind to more strategic possibilities for the potential of writing. Full disclosure: I didn’t read any of these yet. I took Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass, which was amazing and I highly recommend it.
In fact, I recommend Masterclass to anyone who loves learning and thinks it’s neat to learn from celebrities (such as Dan Brown, James Patterson, Samuel Jackson, Christina Agulera, and many more.
@ $15 a month, it is extremely worth it. I’ve been using it for a year and learn so much from professionals that I never would have. And the lessons always feel personal. Sometimes the teachers who are celebs even write back to your comments. Can you imagine Samuel L. Jackson responding to your comment?) about their crafts.
On Writing was recommended to me 2nd hand by a writing mentor of mine. He said that it was good if you need to get outside the traditional learning about writing books and it was interesting if you’re a fan of Stephen King novels too.
I love TED talks, I watch some when I can, so when I saw this book about public speaking from TED talks I knew it would be a winner with powerful knowledge.
If you’re wondering why I would suggest a public speaking book for learning how to be a better writer, it is simple.
When writing has been your profession for years you learn what crafts complement great writing. For instance, IF you want to be a great writer, your secret weapon is research. If you aren’t a personal professional researcher, it will be nigh impossible for you to become a great writer. Public Speaking skills go beyond just speaking and writing.
Those skills bleed into SO many professional avenues that it will not only make you a better writer. It’ll make you a better person in almost everything you do (unless you live in a hole and never interact with other humans in any way, shape, or form.)
Read some of the reviews on each one to see if they look like something you would enjoy. (And DON’T just read the 5-star reviews, read the bad reviews too. I almost always read the bad reviews, most of the time, I read the 1-star reviews first. This actually saves me time when shopping for a new product, especially tech products.)
There is a simple method over 30,000 people use to get paid for freelance writing online.
Opportunities can get started in just minutes a day, all from your home couch.
It’s easy to get started! No previous experience or degree required to start.
Exclusive job listings for writers, updated daily.
Check out Writing Paychecks to see if you can start getting paid to write today.
3. Write Every Day
Now this one is the kicker. If you do nothing else from this post, do this one thing and you’ll surely become a better writer. Write every day.
Now you can:
Write at a certain time every day
Or
Write a certain amount of words every day
Or
Write a certain amount of time every day
You can mix and match these however suits you best. You try them all out and see if one is easier and sticks better for you.
Me personally, I like writing a certain amount of time and writing at a certain time of the day. This keeps me going and I don’t feel bad if I don’t come up with a certain amount of words.
I tried writing a certain amount of words every day and I couldn’t keep up with it and instead of doing it I’d skip it because I knew it would take “too long.”
You see, you are more likely to develop a habit if you start small and take smaller bites that you can handle.
If you already write every day that’s great and you can choose to write more.
If you don’t write then start small.
Start with 1-10 minutes a day. If you find that easy, do more. If you find that hard, write less. At first, start with what seems easy to you and build on that.
The last thing you want to do is start with a habit that’s too hard to do every day. If you bite off too much you might not swallow it. If you find yourself dreading it, that’s a bad sign. If you find that you easily go a week without doing it, that’s a sign you tried to do more than you should start with.
If you want to do a certain amount of words every day I recommend starting with 100 a day. If that’s easy write more. If that’s too hard write less.
I tried 500 words a day and I couldn’t keep up with it. It just became tedious and therefore unenjoyable. I’m a professional writer, so that’s why I recommend starting with less. I mostly work in email writing, so if I’m on a job I might write more or less on those days, but if I’m not writing for a client, 500 just didn’t seem appetizing.
Blogging has definitely changed that for me, that’s why I recommend Starting a Blog.
I now try to write a certain amount of time every day and usually I find that if I get started, I end up writing longer than the first little amount that I force myself to do anyway. Thus, this strategy works very well for me. I’d start with the easy goal of 1 minute. 60 seconds, if you can’t do something for 60 seconds a day, maybe you don’t really want to do it at all.
You can also benefit from writing at a certain time every day. You will know what time works best for you.
It could be first thing in the morning. Some people find that this is their most creative and profitable time.
Me personally, I don’t do so well in the morning, I prefer to write at other times. Afternoon and evening, not late evening though. If I feel my eyes start to droop, I just know that I’m not gonna get much coherent information on the page. (It can be comical though. I’ll go back and read what I was writing the night before and it can be some of the worst writing! I’ll save myself time and energy if I just get some sleep or caffeine instead of trying to push through.)
You might like to write during your lunch at work, or first thing when you get home after eating something.
It’s always a good time to be able to put something on T.V. and write while relaxing.
So you can take time and figure out when is best for you to write.
If you write even just 10 minutes a day for 30 days you will be a better writer at the end of that short 30 days, and you might find that you have developed a habit you look forward to and fully enjoy 🙂 I know I do.
Update: Since Blogging and traveling more while blogging I find that a certain amount of time a day and a certain time of the day becomes tedious and makes blogging less enjoyable for me personally. Again this may work for you, so don’t hesitate to experiment.
Now, I enjoy writing at some point during the day. I find that it doesn’t have to be strict or a certain number of anything. I sit down to write and I find that I can easily be there for hours or an interruption might come up like a family member or friend wanting to hang and I am able to get up and go without any sort of remorse. I find this to be key to my success as a writer and blogger.
4. Research Storytelling
Storytelling will benefit you no matter what writing niche you go into, except maybe academic writing. Even then I’m sure it could be a little useful.
If you look around, you’ll start to see how stories are everywhere and people love stories. We eat them up. We can’t get enough of stories.
Stories are in the movies. Stories are on the news. On blogs, web pages, profiles, social media, history, we find stories fascinating and that is why they work so well and why we should find ways to incorporate the skill of storytelling into our writing, no matter what niche we are in.
Let me give you an example:
I once knew a guy.
He had a problem.
He was about 30 years old living in America, but he didn’t know how to read or write…
Did you notice something there?
I introduced a character and a problem he had, did you notice how you instantly went into “consuming story mode.” Did all your attention get drawn into the short story that started?
If not, that’s okay. It wasn’t super dynamic, but if you did, take time to think about why that happened. Stories are a powerful tool you need to add to your writing arsenal. Study stories and storytelling to engage your audience and grab their attention when you choose.
Stories are great at helping illustrate a point. Great as an ice breaker and a great way to regain your audience’s attention if you think you are losing them.
And stories work across all mediums. Art, writing, presentation, public speaking, with a group of friends or colleagues. Storytelling is a life skill that anyone would benefit from developing, but especially writers.
There is a simple method over 30,000 people use to get paid for freelance writing online.
Opportunities can get started in just minutes a day, all from your home couch.
It’s easy to get started! No previous experience or degree required to start.
Exclusive job listings for writers, updated daily.
Check out Writing Paychecks to see if you can start getting paid to write today.
5. Read about different types of writing
After you get a good handle for your specific niche of writing, you will really benefit from studying other styles of writing and using different tips and tricks to make your style even better by borrowing from the other types.
Different Types of Writing include but not limited to:
Copywriting
Fiction
Non-fiction
Blogging
Email Writing (cold emails, drip campaigns)
Article Writing
Academic Writing
Web Page Writing (About us, Home pages, etc)
Mailers
Landing Pages
Branding
Sales Pages
Video Scripts
Sales Funnels
There are probably more. And there used to be a time not long ago where most of these genres didn’t have precedence, but these days knowing how to do any one of these well can mean good freelancing money for you or better your own business. Either way $$$.
Even looking at this list might help you think more about what you want to do or discover for yourself. You may have not been aware that some of these opportunities existed before now, but now you know and can do something about it.
6. Read, Read, Read
It should make sense at this point. One easy way to get better at writing every day is to read every day.
Having a wide array of reading will make you well rounded and increase your understanding and vocabulary.
Writing a lot is necessary but if you don’t expose yourself to all sorts of different voices and writing styles you might find that you don’t have much to write about.
I recommend have light reading along with tough to read stuff simultaneously.
By having light reading you’ll be able to enjoy reading and move along. But having tough to read material will stretch your will power and ability as a reader and writer.
Exposing yourself to writing that is better than your own will help you improve. You will also more readily observe bad writing and notice when you yourself are writing poorly.
Humans have been writing for some time now and many tricks of the trade are out there for you to see, experience, enjoy, and make a part of your own writing repertoire. So don’t skip the reading.
Bonus: Be a Critical Consumer
Being a critical consumer doesn’t mean you make a bunch of critical comments on the stuff you read and watch like your the next reality TV show judge.
Being a critical consumer is the opposite of being a mindless consumer.
We all watch and read a lot of entertainment.
When you are reading or watching your favorite stories or documentaries take mental notes.
Think about how they use dialogue. What is the main theme of the story?
How did they seamlessly carry you through each step of the story while you consumed it?
Did something not sit right with you about the character development?
Were all the important plot questions answered satisfactorily?
Updated Bonus: 21 Shocking Writing Prompts to get you started writing your next book or short story.
Check out these FREE trial resources from Amazon for when you work from home (or are stuck at home 🙂 ) As an Amazon associate, if you do sign up or buy anything using Amazon links from our site we make a commission at no extra cost to you.
So you’re thinking about starting your own blog and you want to check out Bluehost? If that’s true read on.
If you are thinking about starting a blog I think a REALLY important question to ask yourself is why.
There are many reasons to want to start a blog, but why would you personally want to start a blog now?
Ever dream of starting a blog?
What type of person wakes up and thinks, “I want to start a blog?”
Maybe you want a place to write out all your thoughts.
Maybe you want a space where you can share and teach what you’re learning.
Maybe you just want to sip margaritas during lunchtime and play on Pinterest?
It’s a dream for some, but if you read through my posts on this site about making money blogging it could be a reality for you soon.
Read on and see if you think blogging might be your thing…
To start a blog that makes actual money and grows in time is actually quite inexpensive compared to other startups.
If you have ever thought that you may want to start a blog for fun or ESPECIALLY if you are considering making some passive money on the side blogging, I recommend Bluehost to host your site. Bluehost is still one of the top web hosting companies in 2019 and you can start a blog with them for as low as $3.95 a month ( They advertise that it’s normally $7.99 a month, but if you use the link above you will see that it is as little as $3.95 a month)!
You can choose a different site to host your blog but when you use bluehost to sign up, you can get your domain free for the first year if you purchase a 12 month or longer hosting plan (this will save you at least $15 on your initial purchase). I recommend doing at least the 12-month (I’m using the 36-month to save more $) hosting plan through Bluehost even if you’re not planning on monetizing your blog because if you really love blogging you never know when you might decide to monetize and at that moment you’ll be happy you decided to host and own your domain.
Having your own site looks more professional to affiliate programs and readers. You will be able to have a better following and at any moment you will be able to decide to monetize through ads and affiliate marketing.
Some of my blogging mentors had their blogs going for years before they decided to monetize. You just never know, so you might as well start off on a good foot.
Bluehost is affordable and you can save yourself a lot of money by signing up for at least 12 months. Plus, if you want an even better deal, your best value would be purchasing a 36-month plan (that’s what I did, I like the best deal.) With the 36 month plan, your monthly rate is WAY lower over the long run. So you have options. Do what’s best for you and your specific situation 🙂
For me personally, I started with Bluehost (36-month plan) and WordPress right from the start because I enjoy work from home and being my own boss. Online jobs are growing (and we just saw through the pandemic that having extra side hustles is especially helpful) and this is one way to pay yourself and work when you want. You’ll be glad you did. I’m glad I did.
1-Click WordPress Install (this saves a lot of complication)
24/7 Support
Get 36 months at $3.95 a month instead of $7.99 (That’s a saving of at least $145!)
Plus * Special intro offer and 30-day money-back guarantee (fyi, the 30-day guarantee does not include the domain name, so if you request a refund they will charge a fee. It wasn’t a problem for me, but I just wanted you to know and be aware)
This post on “Why start a blog” is really mean to help you decide and think about any reason why you personally would benefit from starting a blog business of your own.
Why Start a Blog?
Starting a blog can be fun
Start a blog and it can become passive income
As a freelance writer, I can tell you, blogging for yourself is WAY better than blogging for clients
Start a blog and you can serve people with your talents, research, and know-how
You can become a better writer (and content creator) by blogging daily or weekly
If you start a blog you can land jobs as a writer, content creator, and work from anywhere
There are many reasons to want to start a blog, but why WOULD YOU personally want to start a blog of your own?
“In the United States, there are over 31 million active bloggers posting at least once per month. And according to data from Ahrefs, people search Google for “How to start a blog” 121,000 times per month worldwide. That’s nearly 4,000 people who consider starting a blog every day.” – Growthbadger “How many Blogs are there?” – Jan 2, 2019
Sometimes when people think “blogging” they only think writing about a subject. This isn’t true anymore.
A blog is just a space on the internet you own where you can create anything and people can find you and you can share with the world what you have to offer.
If you don’t love writing like we do, that’s okay!
Top Secret: You don’t have to be a good writer to be a successful blogger.
It’s shocking to hear, I know. And it’s a well-kept secret amongst bloggers that they might not want to let you in on.
But today you can start a blog of your own and make videos, pictures, internet tools that help people, infographics, graphic design, and art.
Pretty much anything you can dream up.
You can do it for fun and you can learn how to monetize it. Because who doesn’t love to do what they find enjoyable and make some money while sharing it with the world?
A blogger I follow, Michelle Schroder, makes over $100,000 a month offering her expertise on finance.
If you happen to be passionate about finance why couldn’t you start a blog today and take even a small portion of that pie?
People are out there looking for what you have to offer, the only question is are you going to make the time investment it takes to put your passion out there and see what happens?
1. Starting a blog can be fun
One reason to consider starting a blog is because blogging about your passion is fun and enjoyable.
For me and many other bloggers, we will sincerely tell you that blogging is fun!
You get paid to write (or create) what you’re learning and what you know well. You don’t have to be a 10-year veteran or an expert, you just have to know more than your readers and BE HELPFUL!
If you start a blog to be helpful. Other people will enjoy it more, share it more, and you will find it to be satisfying too.
If you’re looking to help others, there is a big chance you will gather a following and you will enjoy what you write about every day more than if you JUST try to make money online.
And just in case you do like writing, I would venture to say that blogging is fun for most writers.
I know plenty of bloggers that decided they were going to start a blog that now make a decent side income from blogging. Some people even make a full time living from the notion to start a blog.
As I have mentioned before I really enjoy the idea of passive income because it allows you the freedom to do what you think is important in life with the precious time you have.
They generally require very little maintenance once they are running full steam. They require extremely little money or energy investment to start compared to other projects, but once you have it built and going it can continue generating money for you without taking up much of your time.
For instance, if you enjoy writing and getting paid to write you might enjoy being a freelance writer.
Getting paid as a freelance writer you can be paid very well for your time and make your own schedule, but at the end of the day, you still are trading your time and performance for money.
If you stop working the money flow stops too.
If you start a blog, you really can choose when you want to work on it, and when you don’t.
There are many reasons to want to start a blog, but why would you personally want to start a blog now?
3. As a freelance writer, I can tell you, blogging for yourself is WAY better than blogging for clients
If you’re not interested in freelance writing, you may want to skip this section 🙂
I hope I don’t rant here, but I’m pretty passionate about the subject. Writing for clients can be awesome and terrible. At the end of the project, what they think about what you did can outweigh how it performs in their market.
This phenomenon can work for you or against you in your freelance writing business.
Much like a chef if you just focus on SERVING them a fresh dish of what they want you can easily build up a good amount of good rapport and reviews for yourself, but then you run the risk of it not performing well and then they are left with a bad taste for you and other freelancers. This can be bad for everyone.
On the other hand, if you focus more on the performance of your copy and ignore the client and their requests than it might perform well, but they won’t like you which can leave you bad rapport and bad reviews even if you’re the best copywriter.
That’s what makes it hard. You have to find the magical place between where the client feels like they are getting excellent service from you, but at the same time, your piece performs well. This can make for a lot of pressure on yourself, especially if you are a perfectionist.
This is what leads me to say that blogging FOR YOURSELF is much more enjoyable because you have an avenue to be a paid writer (or paid creative), work on your own time, and not feel the pressure of performing for others.
You can use your talents and what you enjoy to help other people without them being disappointed for various reasons outside of your control.
But don’t let that stop you from being a freelance writer. I have been doing copywriting for years working with clients and you can’t beat the money and lifestyle as a copywriter for the time it takes.
I have been able to step away from the 9-5 for the past couple of years, travel more, and spend more time with family and friends by becoming a freelance writer. That’s just one of the specific “headaches” I noticed personally, but some people thrive in that type of environment so I recommend trying it and seeing what works best for you.
Many freelance writing “gurus” will say, “if you buy my course and become freelancer you will become your own boss!!!” This only partly true.
When you write for yourself on your own blog that you own, you REALLY DO BECOME YOUR OWN BOSS.
You are a paid writer. You do work from home. It is an online job. It can become passive in time. It is online work. If you don’t want to create the content (or don’t know how) you can hire freelancers. You get to see first hand the results of your writing and what’s working and what’s not working.
In fact, if you are thinking of becoming a freelance writer I highly recommend starting your own blog through Bluehost (I mentioned the benefits at the beginning of this post) so you can become a better online writer and give your clients real-life experience to help them with their online business. By figuring out how to make your own blog work, others will be much more likely to hire you to help with their blogs and online businesses. You can also promote that you’re a freelance writer using your blog. You can also make more money using your own blog that you own and control.
Blog writing is a big niche for ghostwriters, online freelance writers, and copywriters. So this would be a spectacular way to gain experience that will prove to be invaluable for you and your potential clients.
4. Start a blog and you can serve people with your talents, research, and know-how
Some of the best authors in the world, such as Neil Gaimon, Dan Brown, and James Patterson will all tell you how important research is to great writing.
I don’t care what type of writing you’re doing. I don’t care if you are a blog writer, a copywriter, an author or even a fiction writer. The amount of research and real-life experience you bring into every single piece will carry that piece further than those that do very little to no research.
So do yourself and your readers a favor and do your homework, do good research.
Since you’ll hopefully be researching something you enjoy, it will make sense to want to write it down somewhere, or record it somewhere. Why not a blog?
Take what you’re passionate about and learning and turn around and give to the world via a blog.
When you do your research focus on finding the facts so that you will be able to serve other people with what you learn.
What you looked up someone else will most likely look up too, so don’t be afraid to post what you learn. As you learn, take good notes and write.
Just by writing it down, you will become better at formulating your thoughts in writing and you will retain the knowledge that you learned better.
Focus on serving people with the things you are passionate about.
Find creative ways to share what you are learning about through blogging, making videos, writing, creating images.
There are so many mediums in which you can create using a blog, you just have to figure it out or hire someone to do it for you. And that’s not difficult through places like Upwork.
If you think you aren’t a talented writer and want to be, find out why your copy is failing and get better by blogging and researching more. Don’t accept what other people tell you about your talents as a writer as how good you’ll always be.
And again blogging has become so much more than writing these days. There are:
Recipe blogs
Fashion blogs
Brand blogs
Forum blogs
Freelance blogs
Tutorials
Guides
Info-graphics
Make up
Video
Finance
Design
Architecture
Music
Art
Any medium or topic you can think of can be turned into a successful blog that can help people.
With some good research and practice, I’ll bet you can become very good. Much better than you or anyone else thinks.
When I started copywriting, I didn’t know even what it was. My friend told me he was working as a “copywriter” and I said, “a copywriter? What’s that?”
He explained it to me, I loved the idea and the rest is history. I dove into the world of copywriting, marketing, and writing, and I love it.
So focus on using what you know and what you don’t know (Don’t be afraid to blog as you learn when it’s fresh, someone might find it helpful) to help others out with your Blog. You will get much better feedback and who knows, you might just love it!
If you want to learn something well, teach it. And you can definitely do that by teaching people through what you create on your blog.
5. You can become a better writer (and content creator) by blogging daily or weekly
Blogging is not only fun and beneficial for others, but it can also be beneficial to you as well.
If you think you are bad at writing but want to try it out, ask any professional writer, the best thing to do to get better at writing is to ……. You guessed it! Write!
What’s the best way to decide if a day of writing was successful???
Did you write today?
Yes: Success
No: Failure
So how do you really get better? Research yes, but as far as putting it to practice here are some strategies.
Choose a certain amount of words to write every day.
Choose a certain amount of time to write each day.
Choose a certain time of the day to write every day.
If you really want to dive deep check out our post on How To Become a Better Writer In Just 30 Days in the “search” box.
Same thing with any type of content creation.
If it’s video make and edit videos.
Images? Start creating images.
Design? Sales? Pictures? Etc. And on and on the creation wheel goes and where it stops only time will tell. But you can be a creator and use your blog to share your creation and help the world.
It doesn’t matter what type of information you want to share with your audience. A blog can help.
6. If you start a blog you can land jobs as a writer, content creator, and work from anywhere
Tis true.
I have heard many times how having a blog has led to the blogger being asked to write for a company or other blogger, both as a staff or contracted writer.
You might get a “test job” at first but if you do well and they like it they might ask you for more.
If you dream of being a professional writer, it’s not a bad route to go.
And since they found you and they see your writing already, you can lose the “what if they don’t like my writing,” fear. They ask you to write for them after they’ve seen your writing, they must like something about you’re doing.
If they ask you to write for them, you’re doing something right. I have heard of this happening too many times to think that it won’t happen for any good writer.
As you write your own blog you’ll find your voice and as you find your voice others will notice. It’s a win-win.
Starting a blog helps you create and learn many freelancing skills:
