How I Make Money As a Writer ($100 to $1,000 a Post)

In 2023, I raised my rates from an average of $.25/word to $.50/word.

I was having panic attacks and sweating profusely when I had to tell clients what my new rate was.

So, while you might think all you have to do is raise your rates and you’ll make $1,000 a post, the raising your rates part is the RESULT not the action.

You have to do certain things to command a higher rate with your service to make money as a writer.

And this can take time, like years time.

Well, it did for me.

I had to learn new skills and do things out of my comfort zone to earn money writing.

But, it wasn’t THAT difficult, just a little uncomfortable at times!

So, if you’re a new freelance writer, here’s your plan to raise your rates from $100 a post to $1,000 a post.

Check out my YouTube video (and subscribe to my channel if you want to) if you want to see what this is all about.

1. You Need Companies that Pay Writers & Writers Need a High-Paying Niche

The first thing you need are clients that can actually pay freelance writers.

These are companies that have higher prices for produces and/or services.

You can easily run a Google search for these companies to see what products or services they sell and how much they are selling it for.

For example, Semrush is an SEO agency and their service is a monthly rate of up to $500.

As well, Semrush has a blog with multiple writers, telling me that they have the budget to pay adequately for freelance writers.

The next part is you need to choose a writing niche that pays well.

It’s okay to choose a writing niche that you aren’t familiar with.

This is what I did.

My niche, digital marketing, found me or was revealed to me while I was researching how to market my freelance business.

I was reading a ton of digital marketing blogs and trying out the tactics and also having a lot of fun researching and reading the content.

From that point on, I decided to try landing clients in digital marketing or ones that wrote about digital marketing.

This lead me to write for Blogging Wizard and eventually Smart Blogger and proved to be a high-paying niche.

Other profitable niches include:

Health & Wellness
SaaS
Finance
Specialized content like Law, Real Estate, Medical

Profitable services include:

Sales page writing
Email funnels
Landing pages
Ads

2. Develop a Client Ladder

After you choose a high-paying writing niche, you have to develop your client ladder.

This is a ladder with client avatars from those that pay little to your ideal client that will pay for your value.

Here’s an example of a client ladder:

While I found this a very helpful way to look at how I could increase my rates and make money as a writer, this was one of the hardest things I had to do.

For my client ladder, I wanted to increase my email writing rates from $100 an email to $1,000 an email.

My clients, then, were solopreneurs at the bottom rung to SaaS brands on my top rung.

In the middle were influencers and small businesses.

I struggled for the longest time going from influencers to small businesses. It was hard for me to justify my rates for small business ($500 per email) since I felt I did email funnels and campaigns for solopreneurs or influencers.

Plus, small businesses often didn’t have the budget for email marketing.

So, I had to re-adjust my client ladder so that I could achieve my ideal client and rates.

But for new freelance writers, this helps when you don’t have the experience or the credentials in your niche.

You have to work your way up writing for lower paying clients to get to your ideal client.

3. Build Up Your Writer Platform

A big part of my strategy and what I teach to new freelance writers is building out your writer platform.

When I talk about this platform, what I mean is your brand online.

What social platforms are you on? Do you have a website or a blog? Are you in any Slack channels or have a Youtube channel?

These comprise part of your writer platform and it can help you stand out and show your value to potential clients (i.e. make you more money as a writer).

But for this article, I will stick to LinkedIn as a method to build your writer platform.

It’s important to have a LinkedIn profile for your freelance business.

What about if you have a full-time job and a LinkedIn profile associated with that job?

You either don’t want to add freelance to it or want to alert your boss about it.

The only thing you can do is add one or two experiences that focus on your writing.

It’s not unusual nowadays to have a side hustle.

So have “guest contributor” as one and describe it as one of your clients, or have “content writer/marketer.”

Your LinkedIn profile, over all, should highlight your freelance business.

It will be a strong tool to landing client work.

But, if you can’t change your LinkedIn profile, then consider having another social media profile.

You can use Pinterest, X, TikTok or Instagram.

For many years, I said that X (Twitter) was another strong method to landing client work.

But in 2025, I feel Instagram is a better platform for communication, engagement and pitching.

So make this profile just for your freelance writing business and share your writing samples, guest posts and client work.

4. You Need a Stand Out Portfolio

A portfolio houses your writing.

This can be writing samples like a blog post, magazine articles or copywriting samples like a mock-up email, landing page or website copy.

If you don’t want to commit to a website for your portfolio (which is ideal), you can use a portfolio site like Journo or Medium.

Here’s my Journo portfolio:

These are content platforms where you can share your content.

You can then use that link in your pitches.

It’s a good idea to have more than one portfolio but make sure that each item in your portfolio is your BEST writing.

Another way to have a stand out portfolio is to have many portfolio items. Having one with 10 articles looks and appears more professional than one with only 3 articles.

You can still land a writing job with 3 sample pieces, but it may not be from your ideal client or that high-paying. It’s a start though!

5. Have Stellar Writing

To make more money as a writer you NEED to have highly valuable and stellar writing skills.

And it needs to not read like bland AI writing.

Does that mean you have to inject humor or witty content?

Businesses won’t pay top dollar for generic, same-old ideas that an AI writing tool would whip up.

Top dollar means:

Expert quotes
User generated content at times
Statistics
Descriptive writing
Images
Easy flow
Storytelling

Clients are wanting their writers to share their stories.

This means it more personal and meaningful which translates in a person reading your post becoming invested in it (and invested in the service/product).

Writing online is different from when I started in 2014.

The biggest impact is AI.

AI can write blog posts, but they aren’t that great.

So, it’s up to you to hone your writing skills and only use AI as an assistant.

If you need more help, check out my masterclass on how to write a B2B $1000 article.