I recently posted a blog about side hustles and all the BS that exists online around them. In particular, I focused on one of the most popular—and misrepresented—side hustles out there: affiliate marketing.

This one really gets to me. As a writer I can tell you, most people do not get into this business for the money. Why? Well, anyone can write. It’s simple supply and demand.

Writing—and creative work in general—is routinely undervalued and underpaid. On top of the supply and demand issues, landing a well-paid writing gig usually requires examples of previously published work (aka clips). This incentivizes the people most serious about writing careers to offer up their work for free or cheap just to get examples to show prospective employers.

So why are all these TikTokers claiming to make thousands of dollars with copywrtiting side hustles? Like I explain here, they’re trying to get you to buy something.

How to actually make money writing

Before you go wasting your precious time signing up for sites like Textbroker.com, it helps to understand the economics of writing as an industry. Writing in exchange for money is, of course, a legit business. But understanding how and why there is a market for some writing will help you spot a scam. Below are legit ways to make money writing, and why they work.

Get a job writing for an established publication and get them to pay you directly. This is the most straight forward way to make money writing. Newspapers, magazines and blogs all need writers. But why are these jobs more likely to pay than, say, writing reviews for a third-party website? That’s because established publications monetize their content via metrics like impressions, circulation or subscribers. At the end of the day, the particular metric doesn’t matter, because they all mean the same thing in business terms. Those metrics are simply a proxy for people who are consuming content. Advertisers will pay to get their message in front of people, so the bigger or more valuable the audience, the more an advertiser will pay. Alternatively, (and in some cases additionally), some people will pay a publication directly to access content in the form of a subscription. This usually requires an engaged audience, not necessarily a big one. In other words, publications pay writers for content, because they are investing in an audience they can sell or monetize. (And if you want a reality check on just how challenging the economics of writing can be, just Google “media layoffs 2023”).

Become a freelance writer and get multiple established publications to pay you directly. The economics fueling this method are basically the same as above. Established publications need content to keep audiences engaged and use as a delivery mechanism for the advertisements that pay the bills. This has pros and cons. You get freedom, but in return you have to hustle (like really hustle) to build up a stable of paying publications, manage your own taxes, and be ok with unpredictable income.

Write a blog like this one and monetize it yourself. You can easily place advertisements on your own site with tools like Google Ads or include affiliate links and take a cut of any purchases made. However, to make any money doing this, you either need a very large audience, or a very niche and engaged audience with disposable income and high intent to purchase. So make sure you have a solid plan before pouring your energy into a blog if your goal is making money.

Become a technical writer and work for a company. Companies do need to technical writers to write things like product brochures or to write things like User Journeys that help translate needs between technical teams and their internal clients. Obviously, a technical background helps. You can look for this like you’d look for any other job, and may have success finding roles that are part-time or remote. The key is filling a gap for a niche audience.

Work for a company writing marketing copy, and get them to pay you. Whether it be small local company or a large firm, businesses need to deliver their messages to potential customers, clients or users. AKA, their potential audience. This is a legit job, but it’s also a popular method for scammers. The more a business claims to be seeking writers to deliver messaging to clients without actually naming who those clients are, the more skeptical you should be.

Become a creative writer. Novelists, playwrights, poets and TV writers exist. This is getting pretty far afield from what someone looking for a side hustle would be after, and is by no means my area of expertise, so I am not even going to get into it.

The truth behind popular writing side hustles

Ok, now we understand the economics of writing, which all boil down to one thing: audience. Either writing drives a large audience that is monetized by advertisers, an engaged audience that is monetized by subscribers, a niche audience that has a need for specialized information, or some combo therein. Those are pretty much the only ways that writing leads to dollars.

With that background, it’s easier to spot good opportunities from bad ones. And more importantly, to spot true scams for what they are.

Medium

Medium is a popular website that lets anyone start writing for free on a platform with built-in readers, while foregoing the price associated with running your own blog. What’s more, you can sign up to become a Medium partner and start earning money for your writing.

At first glance, Medium appears very transparent about the inconsistency of their earning structure. In a detailed 2019 article, Medium blogger Casey Botticello shows what he calls an “an unprecedented collection of screenshots of actual Medium articles that have earned anywhere from $20–$3,000, over their lifetime.” He touts big earnings potential without making any outlandish promises. Sounds good. Sounds trustworthy.

Here’s the thing Medium is less upfront about. Though anyone can write on Medium, a lot of famous writers do. And guess what they bring with them? An audience.

The most popular article on Medium as I write this was authored by David Pogue, the famous CBS correspondent, New York Times Columnist and published author seven times over. What I’m getting at is, writing isn’t David Pogue’s side hustle.

Medium makes money through its subscription service. It gives away three free articles a month. After that, you have to pay $5/month or $50/year. It’s free to become a Medium partner, but you need one published article and 100 followers to be eligible to sign up for the program. After that payouts are determined by engaged time.

In other words, the more Medium determines you’re building an audience that is likely to convert to subscribers that will pay them, the more they will pay you.

So does Medium make sense as a side hustle for you? Well, how much of an audience do you think you can build and how much do you think it will be worth, knowing that those $3k high-payout articles above are going to be competing with the David Pogues of Medium?

Substack

Another popular side hustle for writers, but definitely not one billed for the “broke and lazy.” Substack bills itself “a new economic engine for culture”—but what does that actually mean? Let’s break it down.

Substack is a platform that can serve as an Email Service Provider (ESP), Content Management System (CMS) and podcast host. On top of that, it lets you import your own email list and helps make your content within its ecosystem. It also enables subscriptions, and takes 10% of every subscription fee you charge. You also get charged a credit card fee through its payment method, Stripe.

Content creators set their own subscription price on Substack, and according to Hootsuite, the average price point is $5, with some prices going as high as $50.

Is it worth it? If you’re serious about writing or creating content, Substack does offer a lot of infrastructure in one place which can lead to cost savings. But if you’re getting into this for the money, the answer ultimately lies in how big your audience is, how engaged they are, and how much you think you can charge them,

Textbroker and Pointed Copywriting

These are phony bologna and I would go so far as to call the TikTokers suggesting these #sidehustles are predatory. Especially the ones who suggest you sign up, then use ChatGPT to write the copy you get paid for.

But that’s besides the point, because these sites aren’t even taking writers in the first place.

If you can’t read what it says on Textbroker, the message reads:

TL;DR

We are not accepting new authors.

There are too many author applications.

There is not enough work available.

Try again in two months.

Do not sign up.

Why? It’s all down to that simple concept we started with: supply and demand. Remember, anyone can write. And there are a lot more people who want to make money writing than jobs that have a legit reason to pay someone for it. So next time you see a TikTok promising thousands or even hundreds a week for a copywriting gig, ask yourself who the audience is, and who makes money off of that audience. If you can’t answer those questions easily and with specificity, odds are you’ve come across a scam and have just found yourself at the top of someone else’s sales funnel.

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