“If content is king, marketing it has become imperative for brands everywhere,” Statista analysts noted in their 2024 report of the content marketing industry.
Their report also revealed that the top two spending areas of investment for marketing budgets globally are: video content, and thought leadership material.
Writing thought leadership content is viewed as a critical investment for marketing purposes, for several reasons, including boosting credibility and trust amongst customers, standing out from the competition in the industry, and becoming known as the go-to source of information in a specific field, which naturally translates to more opportunities to interweave upselling and promotion of products/services.
The opportunities for freelancers are clear: highly-skilled professionals can capitalize on the demand for quality thought leadership expertise, and make money from their writing skills, providing in-demand services for other businesses while also monetizing their writing skills and industry expertise as a side hustle in itself.
In this article, you’ll discover seven ways you can make money from writing online, and how you can easily turn your domain knowledge (the skills, knowledge, and experience gained form the job(s) you’ve worked in, into passive income as a writer.
7 Ways To Monetize Your Writing Skills In 2025
Let’s say, for example, you have a background in software development or engineering, and want to monetize your skills outside of your 9-5. Here’s how you can do this through writing:
- Offer your services as a technical writer.
- Write for B2B SaaS companies on productivity, AI, and work tools.
- Write (and film) content for an online course on how to start your career in tech/engineering.
- Get freelance contracts to write as a contributor to industry-leading publications in your field.
- Start a paid newsletter subscription on Substack for aspiring engineers, tech students, or other tech enthusiasts.
- Create a LinkedIn newsletter and monetize it after gaining traction and building up a loyal audience, through offering sponsored ad places to companies/individuals in your field, and/or affiliate marketing. Receiving sponsorships and doing affiliate marketing/brand ambassadorships allows you to build passive income because you don’t have to actively do anything every day to make money from your writing–other than continue to write.
- Provide a ghost-writing service for writing white papers, LinkedIn content for other thought leaders and experts, etc.
How To Make Money Writing Without Any Experience
Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need strong writing experience, or have a degree in journalism or communications to succeed as a freelance writer. What you do need, however, are these ingredients to successfully land your first client:
1. Portfolio
A portfolio is a non-negotiable asset any freelancer must have to land clients, especially if you have little experience. But it sounds counterintuitive, right? How do you build a portfolio of writing samples when you haven’t worked with any clients yet? Here’s how:
- Start a blog–not for the purpose of monetizing initially, but simply to create a portfolio of quality writing.
- Offer your services at a significantly discounted rate to initially gain testimonials, case studies, and a portfolio.
- Create mock writing projects to display on your portfolio.
2. Niche
Decide on your niche. Don’t be a generalist writer, writing anything just because it has the biggest promise of money. Focus on an industry you’re already familiar with and passionate about. This will make it easier for you to build trust with clients, and will also make it easier for you to write because you’re not writing from scratch on something you have no clue about.
It’ll make your writing more enjoyable as well.
3. Pitch
Once you’ve acquired a reasonable portfolio within your niche, it’s time to start pitching potential clients. Pitch yourself to clients on Upwork; find B2B service and SaaS providers on LinkedIn and look for freelance writing gig and project opportunities posted online.
Keep your ear to the ground for any opportunities where your writing might be the perfect fit and solution for a company’s needs, where you answer directly to what their audience is looking for.
Use ChatGPT to help you create a list of at least 50 potential clients within your niche, and reach out to them on LinkedIn and via email.
Structure your pitch to include your writing samples, any specific requirements your potential client may have for your pitch, and an example of what you can create for them, including sample titles. Mention any numbers that boost your credibility, like your reach, views, sales conversions, etc.
Anyone with good writing skills can make money online as a writer, especially with AI tools that make the process of writing so much easier. Your challenge today is to identify what area you will specialize in as a writer, and what specific method (from the seven ways listed above) you’ll start with right now, to monetize your knowledge through writing. Just begin with one step. Then, start putting together your portfolio and begin pitching.
If you enjoyed this article, you’ll want to read 5 Remote Freelance Writing Jobs That Pay Up To $10K In 2025.