1. Pick a topic you know well, or would like to know more about, and draft an outline of an ebook you can sell online. Do some Google research to see what the competition is like.

2. Join an affiliate program such as eBay or Amazon if you haven’t already, and incorporate ads into your website and blog.

3. Build a blog or website to talk about your chosen topic. This is where you can sell your ebook or sell other products from affiliates on the topic you’ve chosen. Write several posts and schedule them to post over the next 2 weeks. Write an article on the same subject, using Ezinearticles or another article site, and include links back to your new blog.

4. Join a service like PayDotCom or E-Junkie to have a way to market your ebook when it’s done. Explore whether there are other products there on your chosen topic which you could market as well.

5. Get online and start networking on related blogs and sites where people with your interests post, such as forums and blog networks. Post comments, get to know people there and let them get to know you. These folks can really help you with ideas for your ebook, and places to announce your work when it’s finished.

Using these five steps as a starting point, you can begin to build a following and a product that you can sell, all as a result of your own writing.

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.

Freelance writers often don’t think this way; their idea of making money writing is to send out queries, wait forever, hope an editor bites and eventually pays them.  They think like contractors, freelancers, self employed people perpetually trying to find clients, but not as business owners building income properties. For example, I’ve read books about how to make six figures freelancing, but often the books are about how to churn out article after article, query after query, and sell to someone else, but not how to start publishing and build your own income stream for yourself.

So how do you get started making money online as a writer, where you control the product and publish for your own profit?

There is a website called The Keyword Academy, which offers basic starting advice about how you can make money with online writing. Yes, you have to also build very basic websites – usually using sites that provide tools for you, like blog sites or other online services. And you need to learn the basics of how to market your site or sites, but again, you can use writing skills for this effort too. As a freelance writer, anything you can learn to market yourself online can only help your career.

And what if you don’t want to do this kind of writing? That you really want to make a living writing sci-fi novels, or murder mysteries? If you’re not making it yet with your preferred income stream, and are picking up side jobs and freelance jobs to pay the bills, why not also build some of these side projects bringing you passive income, once they are built, which comes in again and again, which you own, as opposed to a single sale of an article which you have to resell again and again to have it make you money?

And, if you’re someone looking for a way to earn money with a blog because you have been laid off, or are looking for a second income, I can tell you, you don’t have to be a professional or even highly skilled writer to do this kind of writing. You need to be clear, understandable, and know basic English, but you don’t have to be a PhD in Creative Writing to earn money writing online.

This is just one small way you can make money writing online, writing for yourself, building your own portfolio of income properties, which can support you with additional income, or even primary income eventually, if you want to find more ways to make money writing.

I always wonder why so many writers still choose to follow the traditional path, instead of jumping in to market and sell on the Web. I mean, for the writer who was posting to that forum, why not tell the publishers to shove it, and publish your own stuff, on your own site, for readers who WANT IT because you know there are there (and publishers aren’t generally in the niche or long-tail business)?

Anyway, I digress. If you are reading this blog, I hope it’s because you are looking for NEW ways to make money, and MORE ways to make money, and sticking to the query-wait-query-wait-small-sale method just isn’t cutting it for you. Next up, I am working on a multi-part “how to” for digging deeper into ways to sell your work on the web.

My question (after that long rant) is: People who read this, or subscribe to my list, are all over the map in terms of experience. Where do you think you fall in terms of knowing about writing, marketing and selling on the Web?

Ex., some of you probably already have subscriber lists, successful blogs, etc. My plan is to write up basics, in a shorter format (because there are SO MANY great resoruces about getting started, like Tiff Dow’s ebook which you can find on this page) and then let readers follow along as I venture into selling direct, using affilaites, Web 2.0 and the like.

Let’s get started real quick with a couple basic musts:

• If you don’t have your own domain name, get one. You can use your own name, but honestly, if you want to build search engine traffic, you should also register a name that represents your work – like “http://american-catfish-cooking,com” if you write catfish cookbooks, for example. No one is likely to be searching (yet) for your name. So use a domain name they ARE searching for.

• Get your own email. You want email that says “suec@american-catfish-cooking.com” not “suec@hotmail.com”. My fave host and registrar for ten years is Dreamhost.

• How to find what your readers are searching for? Visit SEO Book keyword search tool.

Let me know where you are in your process, building an online presence, marketing, using Web 2.0 successfully, etc. I’d like to feature some of the better responses in a future post.

It’s tough – there are plenty of sites listing more sites, but often half the links are broken, the site owner doesn’t bother to update them.  I’d like my readers to be able to just go down the list, and follow the links to submit to as many appropriate sources as possible.  I’m tracking down dozens of these as we speak, and they’ll all be available with some other great bonuses a “kick off” for this site (since I just went live on April 10th, I’m planning something for the end of the month).

If you have a place you’ve found with consistently good listings (that you’d be willing to share!), or if you have a good resource for finding agents or contests, or anything else related to sites that pay money for writing, post them here.  Don’t list specific market listings (for example I’m not listing magazines or topical sites that accept submissions – other pubs do that way better than I do!).  Add a comment with your best suggestion for finding leads, and if we use it you’ll get attribution with a link to your site! Be sure you get advance notice when the list is available, subscribe to my newsletter if you aren’t already on our list (use the link to the right).