7 Ways Beginners Can Make Money Writing Online | Make Money Online Writing

Writing is one of the most accessible skills you can turn into income online. You do not need a journalism degree, a publishing contract, or ten years of practice. You need to put coherent sentences together, follow a brief, and keep showing up. Alston Godbolt covered seven beginner-friendly ways to make money writing in this video and shared the real numbers behind each one, from a $1.76 payout for a 160-word article to a product that keeps selling itself long after you stop writing it.

Some of these methods pay you the same day you submit your work. Others take a few weeks to pick up steam but eventually earn without constant effort on your part. All seven are things a complete beginner can realistically start this weekend. Here is what the video covers and what you need to know to get moving with each one.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The two content-for-hire platforms where you can submit work today and get paid as soon as the buyer accepts your article
Why Quora answers are evergreen and how Alston pulled 85,000 views without logging into the platform for over a year
How to rank a blog post in Google and the five distinct ways to monetize it once it gets traffic
The YouTube Automation trend that is driving real demand for $5 to $30-per-script writers on Fiverr right now
The Fiverr writing category where there are fewer than 4,000 active sellers and top writers charge $100 per gig
How to write a short ebook and sell it repeatedly on Kindle Direct Publishing and Gumroad without paid ads or a mailing list
The PLR method that lets you sell the same piece of writing to dozens of different marketers, and how to find which of these seven fits your situation at finder.platformproof.com

Method 1: TextBroker and iWriter

The first method Alston covers is using content-for-hire marketplaces, specifically TextBroker and iWriter. These platforms work as a kind of arbitrage: content marketers and business owners come to the site needing written articles, blog posts, product descriptions, and sales pages, and they pay the platform to connect them with writers like you. You pick an assignment, write to the brief, submit your work, and get paid when the buyer accepts it.

The pay scale on TextBroker is tied to quality ratings. Alston showed the sliding calculator on screen. At a three-star rating, a 160-word piece earns $1.76. That sounds small, but write a 4,000-word mini ebook at the same rating and you pull in $50. Improve your rating to five stars and that same 4,600-word ebook is worth $253. The numbers scale fast once you build a track record.

iWriter works similarly. You fill out a profile form and start applying to writing requests from buyers. In the beginning, you will not earn a lot per word. But the key advantage of both platforms is immediate payment. This is not like starting a blog where you write for months hoping traffic eventually shows up. You write, you submit, the buyer accepts, and the money hits your account. That feedback loop is valuable when you are just starting out because it keeps you motivated and helps you improve quickly.

The upside is also that the buyers give you structure. You are not staring at a blank page wondering what to write. They provide a topic, sometimes an outline, keywords to include, and a target length. Your job is research and coherence. Do those two things well and your rating goes up, which directly increases your rate. Alston mentions that getting to $100 per day is realistic even starting at three stars, but it takes time building up reviews.

Method 2: Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer platform where people from all over the world come to get answers to real questions. Alston uses it differently than most beginners do, and that distinction matters. Rather than treating Quora as a direct income source, he treats it as a traffic machine that feeds his funnels and YouTube channel.

Here is why Quora is powerful for writers: answers are evergreen. When you write a good answer to a question today, people will find that answer weeks, months, and years from now because the same questions keep getting asked over and over. Alston showed his own stats on screen: 85,000 views from answering questions, with 683 upvotes, 64 comments, and 17 shares. He mentioned he probably had not answered a Quora question in over a year at the point of filming. The traffic kept coming anyway.

The way to monetize Quora is through links. You write a thorough answer, you drop a link at the bottom to your landing page, your YouTube channel, or your blog. People click through and enter your world. Alston made his first $130 using Quora by searching for questions about a specific hosting company, answering those questions, and putting his affiliate link directly in the answers. He notes that approach nearly got him banned, so the smarter long-term play is to send people to your own content rather than straight to an affiliate offer.

Another benefit Alston points out: Quora answers can show up directly in Google search results. That means a single well-written Quora answer can surface in front of people who never visit Quora at all. For a new writer building authority in a niche, answering three to five questions per day within that niche is one of the fastest ways to start being seen. Stay in your lane, write clearly, and link strategically.

Method 3: Starting a Blog

A blog is written content on a specific topic or niche that lives on the web and earns organic traffic from search engines over time. Alston walks through this as the third method, and he gives a concrete example from his own experience: he ranked fourth in Google for the search term “AAA affiliate program” with a blog post that is roughly 2,000 words long. He did not even write that post himself; he hired someone to write it. The point he is making is that the content does not have to be complicated or long to rank and produce income.

Once a blog post ranks in Google, Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo, there are multiple ways to make money from the traffic it brings in. The first is affiliate marketing, where you recommend tools, products, or services and earn a commission when readers buy. The second is selling your own digital products. Alston mentions a $5 affiliate marketing ebook he sells directly from his blog. The third is coaching. The fourth is merchandise. The fifth is sponsored content once your audience gets large enough.

The process for getting started with a blog is straightforward: pick a niche or topic that has search demand, do basic keyword research to find what people are actually typing into search engines, and write content that answers those questions clearly. Alston notes this is actually his fifth or sixth blog. The earlier ones did not work. But once he understood the traffic side of blogging, the income followed. You do not have to be passionate about the topic in the way people say you do. You just need to be willing to create content consistently and care about giving people useful information.

Method 4: YouTube Scriptwriter

YouTube Automation is a trend where channel owners hire a team of people to run a YouTube channel so the owner earns money through the YouTube Partner Program without doing the daily work themselves. One of the key roles in that team is the scriptwriter. If you can research a topic and write a script that sounds natural and keeps viewers watching, channel owners will pay you for that skill.

On Fiverr, Alston found YouTube scriptwriting services starting at $5 and going up to $30 per script. There are around 1,300 services listed in that category, which makes it competitive. His recommendation for breaking in is to skip the regular listings entirely and go straight to Buyer Requests instead. Buyer Requests are direct asks from clients who need work done, and they are far less competitive than trying to stand out among 1,300 existing profiles. The rates in Buyer Requests are slightly lower, but you build reviews and visibility in the algorithm. Once you have reviews, your regular listing starts to rank.

You do not need to be an expert scriptwriter to get started. You need to be able to research a topic, organize the information into a logical flow, and write the way people actually talk rather than the way people write formal essays. Alston’s advice is simple: do a little research, make sure it sounds coherent, and deliver it on time. The quality bar for early gigs in Buyer Requests is achievable for most writers who have never done this before.

The drawback worth knowing upfront: Fiverr takes a cut of your earnings, and if you are using PayPal to receive payments there is another fee there too. That is the cost of using the platform’s built-in audience instead of building your own client base from scratch. For most beginners, that tradeoff is worth it because you get immediate access to buyers without needing to do your own marketing.

Not sure which of these seven writing methods is the right starting point for you?

Answer a few questions and get a specific recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

Method 5: Sales Copy

Sales copy is the text on a page, in an email, or in an ad that gets a buyer to open their wallet. It is different from regular article writing because the goal is not just to inform; the goal is to persuade. That makes it more valuable and harder to do well, which is why copywriters can charge significantly more than general content writers once they build a track record.

On Fiverr, the sales copy category has around 3,800 active services, which is actually less competitive than the YouTube scriptwriting category despite being a more specialized skill. Alston points to one example on the platform: a seller with 197 five-star reviews who starts his packages at $100. That is the ceiling a beginner can realistically aim for once they have built credibility. At the entry level, someone new to Fiverr can expect to start around $10 per gig, but the path to higher rates is clear: get reviews by completing Buyer Requests first.

Alston’s advice for getting good at copywriting is to read a lot of copy and pay attention to the patterns. What do high-converting sales pages have in common? What do weak ones do wrong? Understanding what makes someone buy, and being able to replicate that in writing, is a learnable skill. It requires understanding what people actually want at an emotional level, not just the surface features of a product. That knowledge comes from reading widely in the space and noticing what consistently shows up in copy that works.

Fiverr is not the only option for finding copywriting clients. Alston mentions Upwork and People Per Hour as alternatives. The point is that freelancing platforms have made it easier than ever to find your first client without needing a personal network or an existing portfolio. You start small, do the work well, collect the review, and raise your rate over time.

Method 6: Writing an Ebook

An ebook is a short digital book, usually in PDF or Kindle format, that you sell online. The writing-for-ebooks category has two distinct paths: writing ebooks for other people as a service, or writing your own ebook to sell as a product.

On the service side, Fiverr shows ghostwriting starting at $5 for 250 words. That is a low rate, and Alston acknowledges you need to make sure you are getting paid what your work is worth. The platform can work against you if you price too low and attract clients who undervalue the work. But as a starting point to build reviews and experience, ghostwriting for other people is a real path in.

The more compelling opportunity Alston describes is writing your own ebook. If you identify a real problem people have and are willing to do the research to solve it, you can write an ebook and sell it on Kindle Direct Publishing, Gumroad, or similar platforms. The ebooks do not have to be long. Alston is explicit about this: a 200 to 300-word ebook can make money if it solves a specific problem well. His examples of topics with proven demand include how to get more followers on TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram. People search for that information, they are willing to pay for it, and you do not need any personal experience in the niche as long as you put in the research to give accurate, useful advice.

The advantage of writing your own ebook versus writing for others is that your work keeps earning after you finish it. You write it once and then sell it again and again. That is the shift from trading time for money to building a small asset. Even a $5 or $10 ebook that sells ten times a month is $50 to $100 in recurring revenue you did not have to show up to earn that month.

Method 7: PLR Content

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. This is the one method in the list that most people have never heard of, and Alston flags it specifically as the one nobody talks about. The idea is this: you write an article or ebook on a specific topic, you publish it on a PLR marketplace, and marketers buy it over and over again. Each buyer gets the rights to use it however they want, whether that means publishing it under their name, using it as a lead magnet, including it in a product bundle, or repurposing it in some other way.

Alston showed examples of PLR sites where ebook bundles sell for $9. He searched for PLR articles and PLR ebooks and found a wide range of niches being served. That tells you the demand is real across many different topic categories, not just make-money niches. Health, parenting, personal finance, pets, home improvement, gardening, fitness: marketers in all of these spaces buy PLR content to use in their businesses.

The key advantage is that you can put the same PLR article or ebook on multiple sites at the same time. You write it once and list it across several marketplaces, and every time a buyer purchases it from any of those sites, you get paid. Over time, popular PLR content becomes a quiet income stream that you created during one writing session weeks or months ago. Finding PLR sites is as easy as searching “PLR” on Google; you will see dozens of active marketplaces that accept submissions from new contributors.

The skill required is not that different from writing a blog post. You research a topic, you write something genuinely useful, you format it cleanly. The difference is your customer is a marketer who wants to use the content commercially, so you need to be clear on the licensing terms of whichever platform you choose and make sure your writing holds up as a standalone piece that someone else can put their name on.

Honest Drawbacks Across All Seven Methods

Each method has real limitations worth knowing before you pick one.

TextBroker and iWriter pay immediately, but the rate per word starts low. You have to write a lot of content at three-star rates before you earn enough to make it worth your time. The income is also tied directly to how many pieces you complete. Stop writing, stop earning.

Quora is powerful for passive traffic, but you are building on a platform you do not own. Quora has changed its rules and policies before. Your answers could be removed, your account could be restricted, and there is no way to directly monetize without sending people somewhere else. It works best as a traffic source, not a standalone income method.

Blogging has the highest earning ceiling but also the longest runway. Google does not rank new blogs overnight. Most bloggers spend three to six months writing consistently before they see meaningful traffic. If you need money this weekend, a blog is not the answer. If you are willing to build for six months, the compounding effect of search traffic is real.

YouTube scriptwriting and sales copy on Fiverr both face the cold-start problem. Your first gig is the hardest to get because buyers look at reviews, and you have none. Buyer Requests lower the barrier, but you will work for below-market rates at first. Budget three to five completed gigs before your profile starts getting organic traffic.

Ebook writing as a service has the same Fiverr cold-start issue. Writing your own ebook is a better long-term play but requires upfront research and the patience to market the finished product. A great ebook sitting in a folder with no buyers is worth nothing.

PLR content is the least competitive method in the list because few beginners know it exists. The income is passive once you publish, but individual PLR pieces do not tend to sell at high prices. It is a volume game. Writing twenty solid PLR articles across five niches and listing them across multiple sites gives you a wider base of income than one or two pieces.

How to Pick Your Starting Point

The right starting method depends on two things: how fast you need to earn and how much time you can put in per week.

If you need money within the next few days, TextBroker or iWriter gives you the fastest path to a first payment. You sign up, write an article, submit it, and get paid when the buyer accepts. No waiting for traffic, no building an audience.

If you have four to six hours per week and want to build something that compounds, starting a blog and writing your own ebook to sell on it creates two income sources that grow together. Your blog posts bring in search traffic. Your ebook gives visitors something to buy. Over six months, that combination can produce consistent monthly income without you needing to keep finding new clients.

If you enjoy research and want a skill that commands higher rates over time, sales copy is the path. It is harder to learn than general content writing, but the ceiling is much higher. A skilled copywriter can charge hundreds of dollars for a single email sequence or landing page. That is not a beginner rate, but it is a realistic goal within twelve months of consistent work and deliberate practice.

If you want passive income from a single effort, PLR and ebook writing both fit. You create the content once and list it in places where buyers come to you.

Find Your X

Seven methods is a lot to sort through. The fastest way to figure out which one fits your current situation, your schedule, and your income goal is to answer a few short questions. The Platform Proof Finder matches you with the method that makes the most sense for where you are right now. Go to finder.platformproof.com and find your path.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need writing experience to use TextBroker or iWriter?

No formal experience is required. Both platforms start you at a basic rating level and let you earn up based on the quality of your submissions. Buyers provide the topic and often an outline, so you are not expected to come up with ideas from scratch. Your job is to research and write clearly. The more you do it, the better your rating gets and the more money you earn per word.

How long does a Quora answer need to be to get traffic?

There is no fixed length requirement, but answers that give genuine depth tend to get more upvotes and visibility. A three to five paragraph answer that actually solves the problem typically outperforms a one-sentence response. Alston’s advice is to answer three to five questions per day within your niche and focus on consistency rather than gaming any particular format.

How long before a blog post starts ranking in Google?

For a brand new blog, expect three to six months before you see meaningful organic traffic. Some posts pick up faster, especially for low-competition keywords. The key is to write posts that target specific questions people are already searching for rather than broad topics. Longer-tail searches (very specific questions) tend to be less competitive and rank faster than general terms.

What makes a good YouTube script compared to a regular article?

A YouTube script is written to be spoken aloud, which means shorter sentences, more conversational phrasing, and clear transitions between ideas. You do not write “Furthermore, it is important to note that…” in a YouTube script. You write “Here is the thing” or “Now here is where it gets interesting.” Reading your script out loud as you write it is the best way to check whether it sounds natural or stiff.

Is copywriting harder to learn than content writing?

It is a different skill more than a harder one. Content writing is primarily about informing. Copywriting is about persuading, which requires understanding buyer psychology in addition to writing clearly. The learning curve is real, but it is a learnable skill. Alston’s recommendation is to read a lot of existing sales pages and emails and notice what patterns show up consistently in pieces that convert well versus ones that do not.

How short can an ebook be and still sell?

Alston specifically mentions 200 to 300 words as a viable ebook length if it solves a very specific problem. The buyer does not care about word count; they care about whether the ebook gives them what they came for. A 250-word guide that tells someone exactly how to set up a specific tool or solve a specific problem can sell just as well as a 10,000-word tome that circles around the same answer without getting to the point.

Can I put the same PLR content on multiple sites?

Yes. Alston explicitly covers this. The same PLR article or ebook can be listed on multiple PLR marketplaces simultaneously. Each site becomes a separate sales channel. Because each individual buyer is paying a relatively small amount for PLR content, spreading the same piece across more platforms increases the total number of buyers you can reach without any additional writing effort.

Which of these seven methods makes the most money long-term?

Blogging and ebook writing have the highest long-term ceilings because they build assets that earn passively. Copywriting has the highest hourly rate ceiling once you develop real skill, with experienced copywriters charging hundreds of dollars per project. TextBroker and iWriter are best for immediate income with less long-term upside. PLR and Quora are passive income additions rather than primary income sources for most writers. The honest answer is that the best method is the one you will actually do consistently, not the one with the highest theoretical ceiling.

Sources

TextBroker writer pay scale: textbroker.com
iWriter freelance writing platform: iwriter.com
Quora question and answer platform: quora.com
Fiverr freelance marketplace (YouTube scripts, sales copy, ghostwriting): fiverr.com
Kindle Direct Publishing: kdp.amazon.com
Gumroad digital product platform: gumroad.com
PLR marketplace overview: search “PLR” on Google for active listing sites
Upwork freelance platform: upwork.com
People Per Hour freelance platform: peopleperhour.com