I Made $1,000 Only Writing N Words

This content originally appeared on DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻 and was authored by Sunil Kumar

The article was originally publised on my blog here.

N being a number… not what you are thinking!

And I’ll get to that number in a moment, but first, let me give you some context.

8 years ago when I started my career as a Software Developer my salary was around $500 per month. It was a humble beginning.

I now charge that much writing one article. It takes me anywhere between a day or two to complete the research on a topic and write a ~1000 words article.

That’s great money for just a weekend’s worth of effort. Isn’t it? Especially for someone living in a country like India.

This article is not about bragging about how much money I’m making.

But I want to show you the possibilities of how much money can be made by writing online, what did I do to land $1K sponsorship deals with companies, and how you can replicate the same.

Let’s get started!

What Was the Deal About?

The deal was to write an article of ~1200 words. Publish it on my blog. And also post it on my Twitter account where I have a ~50K audience.

Simple right?

Nowadays companies are looking for micro-influencers who have a niche audience to promote their products. Companies are spending a lot of money on influencer marketing.

But how much money can be made depends on:

• Your content writing skills
• How much visibility do your posts get
• How you negotiate the deal
• Sometimes companies ask you about your previous work and also the kind of traffic you were able to generate on those.

So it’s good to keep those handy when you negotiate deals.

What Was the Offered Amount of Money?

I was offered $1K as part of this deal.

You may think that’s a lot of money for writing just one article.

And it definitely is!

But this was not the initial amount they offered me. In fact, there was no money offered initially.

Read on to understand how I was able to negotiate such a deal.

How Did I Get This Deal?

When they DMed it was just about trying out one of their latest products.

I pitched them the idea of using my Twitter audience to promote their product.

After a lot of back-and-forth negotiations, they finally agreed to pay me $1K to write an article and also post it as a thread on my Twitter timeline.

It’s not easy for someone who is just getting started to make such deals. Even if he/she is a great writer.

You need to bring a lot of value to the table.

What was the value that I was bringing to the table?

1. My writing skills.
2. I have a huge audience on Twitter. This will help companies get more eyes on their products.
3. My blog where the article will stay forever.

As you can see, my 50K follower base was one of the main reasons for scoring such a deal.

You may be wondering, “How can I grow my audience?”.

That’s a completely new topic altogether. I’m not going to cover that here.

But, in short:

This didn’t happen overnight. It took me years of consistent hard work and posting every single day for the last 2 years to grow my Twitter account.

Make sure you’re not taking any shortcuts. Every platform has certain strategies that you need to follow.

You need to play the rules. Write content for the algorithm. More importantly, focus on providing value. Your account will grow as a by-product.

Anyone can approach companies and close such deals if they have a large enough audience and strong writing abilities.

What Were the Metrics After I Posted the Article and Thread?

Alright, you must now be curious about how my post and the thread performed.

Here are the Twitter metrics for the thread:

The thread did decently well.

28K impressions is a pretty good number considering all the views were shown to the right audience.

Here are the Medium article metrics:

The article was published on the company’s Medium page.

It didn’t do very well, in my opinion. However, it will always be available on my Medium blog.

That implies that they continue to receive traffic eternally as my blog gains popularity. So it’s a good deal for them in the long term.

Also, they have good content to showcase on their Medium publication page.

What Are the Steps You Can Take To Possibly Replicate the Same?
If you want to start making money online through sponsored deals, it’s very important to have an online presence.

Either in terms of:

1. Followers on a social media channel
2. A blog that has good viewership, or
3. A YouTube channel with a lot of subscribers, etc.

And growing an online presence is not an overnight task. As mentioned earlier, it’s gonna take a lot of effort and persistence.

But once you do this, you can reach out to companies in your niche and get deals like these.

Who wouldn’t want to make a thousand dollars by working for a day or two right?

If you have an online presence, sponsorship deals are not the only way to make money online.

There are many other opportunities through which you can monetize your account:

1. Affiliate marketing
2. Selling your own info products
3. Setup an eCommerce Shopify store
4. Getting traffic to your blog/YT channel, etc

You can take a look at this article where I talk about 8 different ways to make money using your Twitter account.

How Much Money Is on the Table?

As mentioned earlier, companies are spending a lot of money on influencer marketing these days in addition to the shit load of money they already spend on ads.

With influencer marketing, they get better conversions assuming the influencer they are using has the right audience and a great conversion rate.

Now $1K seems a lot of money for a single article, right?

You can in fact make a lot more if you have a bigger online presence.

Just to give you an idea, my friend who has around ~250K followers on Twitter charges ~$1K for a single tweet!

That’s right!

$1K for just typing out 280 characters and posting it on his timeline.

Of course, not every company is ready to pay that much for a single tweet. But anywhere between $500-$1000 is a great deal considering you don’t have to do anything other than post a single tweet on your timeline.

If you know how to build an online presence and do it right, then there’s a lot of money to be made.

Only the sky is the limit!

I hope this article has given you some insights into my sponsorship deal and also an idea of the kind of money you can make using your online presence and the roadmap to achieve the same.

Related Articles:

1. 6 Best Ways To Make Money Writing Online
2. 6 Easy Ways I Make Money as a Software Developer (2022)
3. I Spent 35 Hours Writing an eBook and Earned $2,723 in the First 6 Months
4. Quit Your Job By Growing Online Presence: An Effective Way To Take Control Of Your Life
5. How To Improve Online Presence: 6 Strategies That Helped Me Grow My Twitter Account to 49K Followers
6. 9 Tips For Crafting Social Media Content Strategy That Engages Your Audience

This content originally appeared on DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻 and was authored by Sunil Kumar