Do You Have to Be a Writer?
I wish I had a dollar for every time I hear someone say, “I can’t create an online business because I can’t/hate to write.” Even I thought this for a while. But is this true? Do you have to be a writer to be an UnWorkaholic?
I will admit that it helps. If you love writing, you can produce blog posts and informational products easily and enjoyably. And since information products and blogging have a pretty high rate of return, writing can indeed help you succeed in an UnWork lifestyle.
But the answer to the question is no. You don’t have to be an writer to make it online. You will have to write some, even if it’s just getting your thoughts on paper for someone else to polish, but there are ways to minimize the writing. Here are my tips for doing so:
- Pick a non-writing business – If you hate to write, sell something besides information. If you are selling a doodad or something physical like that, you won’t have to write in order to produce it. A similar option is selling software, either that you coded or you hired someone to code for you.
- Use alternate media – Hate to write but love to talk? How about delivering your information through audio or video? A successful video blog can be just as powerful an online tool as a regular blog. And plus, audio products have a higher perceived value when packaged into a product, which means your audio information product may sell for more then an ebook anyway.
- Hire a transcriptionist – If you still want to have a blog, you can record your entries and hire someone to type them up for you. You may have to try a few people before you find a good fit, but this is definitely doable. Some of them may even be able to post your entries to your blog for you.
- Hire a writer – You come up with the outline for your post or ebook and then work with someone else to actually get it written. This works great for information products where you supply the ideas and someone else actually writes it. This is called ghostwriting.
- Create a group blog / community – This is where you have a team of people all writing on your blog. Your audience knows about the team and can see who posts what, but you hare still running the show. You provide direction to the team by setting the goals for the site and benefit from the group success.
Those are my ways to still be successful online even if you don’t like to or can’t write. If you try something and keep hitting road blocks, that may be a sign that you need to look into alternate paths. I hope these can provide you with a starting point.
What other ways can you think of to get around a writing road block?
| Print article | This entry was posted by Hailey Rene on May 15, 2010 at 11:58 am, and is filed under UnWork for Beginners. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |




about 2 years ago
I agree with you that there are lots of people making good money from video. I bought a product recently in which the author describes how he uses video almost exclusively to earn a passive income online. He literally creates a video around a problem (like computer viruses, setting up an online business etc.) and submits it to YouTube. Then he creates *another* video that presells a product that solves this problem. He links his YouTube video to the presell video.
Then by building links to the YouTube video, it moves up the search engine rankings. People watch the video and are interested in what he says. So they click the link to visit his one-page website with the presell video. And some people after watching it then click the link below and buy the product he is an affiliate of.
He makes a good living like this with just a Flip camera and a little link building. So no, you don’t *have* to be a writer.
Another addition to your list would be the transcription software like Dragon Naturally Speaking where you can simply speak into your computer mike and the result will come up as text. You can even use Google Voice for this as it will turn voicemail messages into text and email it to you so you could simply ring yourself and “talk” your message. When the email arrives you have text ready to use.
Lastly, remember that a valid marketing technique is to create podcasts and distribute them online such as on iTunes which gets massive numbers of visitors each day.
about 2 years ago
Richard,
Thanks! Those are really good ideas. I like the video one especially.
I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking for a while, but I couldn’t get it to work. No matter what I said it came out as goobly-gook. Maybe I didn’t use it or train it long enough. Google Voice is an interesting option… I’ll have to try that.
Thanks for posting those ideas.
Hailey
about 1 year ago
Those all were definitely good ideas. I like writing, but I only write when I feel like it, so I have taken the route of hiring writers through Elance.com and Guru.com. I’ve had some bad experiences and some good ones. I would say that the only way to make sure you don’t get burned is to look at their portfolios and feedback. For some reason one time I thought that it was okay to trust a new writer that did not have a feedback or a portfolio. It was one of the most trying experiences in my life.
I’m now exploring hiring a part-time virtual assistant from the Philippines. I think I will have a better time with working with this one person than the many.
about 1 year ago
And Dragon Naturally Naturally speaking and Google Voice definitely like 50% accurate. It’s annoying.
about 1 year ago
Hi Lis,
I have yet to hire a writer, but I do have a VA for other data-entry type tasks and programming. They can be hit or miss.
I actually have hired 4 no feedback people. Of them, 1 was absolutely amazing, 1 is willing to work really hard and usually gets it right, I fired 1 for being horrible, and the other is kind of frustrating me now. I did each of them because they are cheaper then most people. But if you do go the route of no feedback, be prepared to try a few people before you get the one that works the best.
Good luck with your new VA.
Hailey