You can do it but you have to think a little differently about your business than the typical freelance writer. Here are the basics:

- You need to do more than write for other people – write and sell your work direct to the consumer.
- Build a network of blogs and websites where you sell your products direct.
- Earn income from these sources – selling your work multiple times, direct to readers and buyers, and not just a couple times to publishers (who are profiting from your work themselves!).
- Learn how to build sites and blogs quickly, or use tools to help you do so.
- Learn how to market your blogs and sites effectively – or hire someone to do it for you at affordable rates.

Just those five easy steps can get you started. But, you may be asking, where do you find out more about each of those steps?

There are dozens, if not hundreds of web sites and blogs that will tell you what you need to know to start a profitable writing business, including blogging for money, and publishing your own websites to bring in money.

In the next series of posts, I’ll focus on some of the details of how to do this, including Web resources, links, and ideas to get you started and keep you going to build passive income as a six figure writer.

It really is about taking the time to build quality content, then getting links to your site, and publicizing your site around the Web in a variety of ways.

You might ask: what is the best way to get traffic to your site? The best way is to get targeted traffic – visitors who are looking for exactly what you are writing about. Often, this is the reason that social bookmarking is not the most highly desirable method of getting traffic. It’s been shown that social site traffic is mostly “surfers” who are interested but may or may not be the precise audience you are writing for. If you’re monetizing your site or your blog, social traffic is the least likely to earn you income, for that reason.

How can you get targeted traffic from the Web? You need to get good rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN search engines for your topic, attracting people who are searching for the info you provide.

One of the best ways to do that is to use article marketing. You write multiple articles describing information from your site, then post those around the Web, so that the search engines pick them up and point visitors to your main site or site. Each article contains links to your site, giving you multiple backlinks and quality content that leads visitors to your page.

Article writing and posting, especially if you’re trying to post to many different article directories, can be tiring. A few different services are available now to help make the task easier.

Using article marketing helps in a number of ways: You get keyword anchored backlinks to yoru site, which help your rankings in the search engines; you get more authority for having top content posted in a variety of places on the Web; and the articles themselves start giving you additional impact by getting listed in the search engines as well as pointing to your site. These are just a few of the ways article marketing can help grow traffic to your site.

It also beats advertising, which can be extremely costly, and where testing alone can blow through your budget. You can buy links from a variety of services, but this is also expensive, and can hurt you in the long run. You also don’t want to try using “black hat” methods, which can get you banned from Google for good.

Using article marketing to promote your site is still 100% legit with all search engines, keeps working for you even while you sleep, and is really inexpensive. It can also help your site get indexed quickly, which means traffic finds your page right away.

If you can write quality sites, you can write good articles to post online, and drive traffic to your site – quality, relevant traffic, that can help build your presence online.

The flexibility of working in freelance writing is probably the most attractive aspect of writing for money. Usually, though, freelancers will tell you that the money is not that great, and getting freelance writing jobs can be truly competitive. It seems though that many writers don’t take advantage of online wirting opportunities both to find work writing for others, and also using your own writing skills to build your own, personal income stream.

I usually encourage people to think of their writing as a business – not a business as a freelance contractor, but a publishing business. You write articles, web content, blog posts, for pay; then you sell those to other people, such as businesses building an online presence, or webmasters building niche websites. What’s to prevent you from using your writing skills to create online “real estate” in the form of your own websites that bring you money?

When you’re thinking about how to make money whether online or off, Hub Pages is one of the ways you can make money with writing.  Building Hubs requires that you write reasonably well, have interesting content to share, and make your Hub attractive enough to bring back visitors again and again, which leads to you making money with your Hubs. So, if you’re starting out as a freelance writer, it can’t hurt to build Hubs to add an income stream, but also as a sample of your work that you can use to show clients.

You can also find work writing articles and content for others. Sites like Elance.com or Guru.com give you an opportunity to search for clients who need writers. Be sure to post a professional profile and references to showcase your work. Some of the jobs available include article writing, e-zine writing, blog post writing, and writing ebooks on a particular topic.

You can also post ads around the Web offering your services. You can list your services at Digitalpoint Forums, Sitepoint Marketplace, and others.

Build yourself a great looking blog or website showcasing your work too, and by using smart search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you can get organic traffic from those looking for writing services.

Start to learn how to build your own websites which will bring visitors and help you make money with your wriitng. A good, inexpensive ebook on the subject of how you can build a profitable writing business is Building An Ebook Empire, by Tiffany Dow. Check it out, and get started making cash from your writing.