Want to write—and actually get paid for it? Read this.
Discover the easiest writing path to start with—and the one most digital writers get paid for.
📚 Table of Contents - What you’ll learn in this Article Series.
The Two Things You Need to Be a Writer Who Gets Paid
The Writing Style Anyone can Apply to Get Paid
Breaking Free from the “I Need to Be an Expert” Mindset
Part Two
Where to Start from Zero
How to go from Starting to Scaling
Part Three
How to Structure Teaching-Style Posts
→ Based on formats I’ve used in my best-performing posts (from a pool of 100+ articles)3 Plug-and-Play Post Frameworks You Can Use Today
→ Just plug in your knowledge and you’re good to goMonetization Without Forcing It: What Happens After Writing a Lot
Final Thoughts
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It truly helps me keep this newsletter going and allows me to keep EVERYTHING FREE.
I’ll keep doing my best to show up and share things that are useful to you. 💛
Back to the Article
First, let us address the bare minimum, the essentials you will need to get paid.
You don’t need a hidden bestseller in your drawer.
You don’t need decades of wisdom or frameworks like James Clear or David Allen.
What do you need?
✅ A genuine love for writing.
If you hate it, why punish yourself?
If your only reason is to monetize, then there are other things to monetize, things that you might enjoy doing. Doing something you dislike and trying to make money from it is double the struggle.
That’s burnout waiting to happen.
✅ Something you know (or are learning).
That’s it. You enjoy writing, and you have something to say.
If you have knowledge or lived experience about anything, then that’s enough to have something to write.
This could be that one topic or thing you always bring up in conversations (you know, the one people nod at and go “oh cool” before moving on, but you bring it up anyway any chance you get because you love talking about it) why not share it to people that are interested in those stuff and will find it useful not shove it to those who are not interested.
Okay, you can write, and you have something to write about.
The next question is:
How are you gonna turn that into something people pay for?
That brings us to:
The Overlooked Path to Building a Writing Career
Teach through your writing.
It’s not loud. It’s not flashy.
But it’s one of the most effective, honest ways to grow—and yes, earn—from your writing.
How Can Teaching Get You to Monetize Writing
1. Packaged Information
Information is an expensive thing. You wouldn’t be able to write if the knowledge of how to form sentences or make sensible paragraphs hadn’t been taught to you, and that’s knowledge we paid for, either with our time or money, through schooling or acquiring resources.
But here’s the catch: in our world today, information is everywhere and often free.
So giving away information alone, though valuable, isn’t anymore a strong way to earn.
There’s another step — distilling/Packaging information.
The internet, social media, and countless books already provide us with an overwhelming amount of information.
But not all of it fits our needs, situations, or goals.
Much of it turns into noise that pulls us away from what we should actually be doing. Some of it even makes us less productive, trapping us in endless consumption instead of creating, where the real learning happens.
And it’s not mysterious why this happens.
If you don’t know exactly what information you’re looking for, and only have a vague interest in a topic, it’s easy to chase every rabbit hole and try to learn everything.
Sure, we could consume all of it, decode it piece by piece, and distill it ourselves, but the time, effort, the wrong turns along the way, and resources you’d spend to do that would be enormous.
Now, what if someone could do that for you, would you pay them a fraction of the time and money you’d spend doing it yourself?
For someone willing to trade money for time, it’s obvious—why waste countless hours and resources on things that could be spent elsewhere, maybe even on things that earn you more?
Of course, they would pay
That’s the first reason: distilling information is an expensive thing to do — and people will gladly pay you to do it for them.
2. Teaching a Skill
The second reason — which I think is an even higher level than distilling information — is teaching a skill.
If you haven’t noticed, we live in a skills economy.
The fact that freelancing is a popular industry today is proof of that; freelancing is essentially selling your skill. It’s also why skill stacking is becoming more and more popular.
(Here’s an article if you’re curious what skill stacking is: https://dariusforoux.com/skill-stacking/)
Bottom line: people with higher-level skills — and unique combinations of them — are in demand. If you can give someone something they can use to make money, they’ll be more than willing to pay for it.
To them, it’s not just an expense — it’s an investment, a no-brainer.
Hence, easier to monetize.
It’s important to note that the skill here isn’t just the technical kind—like fixing a computer.
Skills can also be things like managing your emotions, being more mindful, or communicating effectively. Everything we do to make our lives easier is a skill.
That’s why I talk about “lived experiences,” because within them there might be a skill you’ve mastered—one that could help a lot of people—that you might not even realize you have until you start writing about it and sharing it.
🗳️ Poll Break
3. You step into thought leadership.
And this, I’d say, is perhaps the most valuable thing you’ll get when you teach through writing — or any form of content.
When you teach something consistently over a long period, you naturally accumulate a large body of work. Over time, you might slowly become a thought leader in that niche — and with that comes influence and a powerful network.
Those two alone are a potent formula for further monetization and entirely new business opportunities.
The sky is literally the limit.
Look at writers like Nicolas Cole, who built an entire empire from online writing.
Steven Bartlett, who turned his podcasting into a global brand.
Ali Abdaal, who transformed productivity into a multi-million dollar business.
You can launch products directly from your writing and repackage your stored content into endless formats—books, eBooks, courses, guides, or communities.
You can also branch into building software, offering consulting, forming partnerships, or securing sponsorships.
Through your content, you already have free marketing channels: your audience and your past materials. These not only showcase your expertise but also serve as living proof of the value you provide.
On top of that, the data you’ve gathered from your content’s performance can serve as the blueprint for your next big strategy.
So now that you’ve recognized the opportunities in taking the path of teaching through writing, it’s time to shift our focus.
Before we dive into the technical details of how to pull this off (which we’ll cover in Parts 2 and 3), we need to address the very first challenge that shows up the moment you commit to this path:
That annoying voice in your head that says
“Why would anyone listen to me?”
“I’m not the best in this field.”
“There are already people way ahead.”
“I’m not even an expert.”
Yep. That one. The voice perhaps we all hear.
Breaking Free of “I Need to Be an Expert First”
One of the biggest myths that keeps writers stuck is this:
“I need to be an expert before I can talk about a certain topic.”
Not true.
The best person to teach a beginner is often someone just a few steps ahead.
Experts are so good at their field that they often skip small details that, for them, are already automatic—but for beginners, are essential steps they still need to work through consciously.
That means the best teacher for someone who’s just starting might not be someone 10–20 years ahead, but someone just 2–5 years into the thing.
Your insights are more timely, your struggles are more recent, and your advice is likely more understandable and relevant to them.
So now you don’t have to be an expert.
For someone out there, you’re the perfect teacher.
And no one can teach the way you do because no one has your exact background, views, or lived experience.
This also means, however, that you can’t help or please everyone. But that’s fine—because even experts can’t.
UP NEXT:
In the next part, I’ll give you a ready-to-use shortcut for creating teaching-style posts that actually land with readers.
You’ll see my exact outline for keeping content clear and engaging, plus three plug-and-play frameworks I’ve used in some of my most successful pieces.
We’ll also look at how these formats can grow into a full content library you can monetize—through products, consulting, sponsorships, and more.
💡Subscribe now to get notified when the next parts drop.💡
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Well done.
I learned a lot by reading it and seeing how you structure the post.