Supplementing My Essay Paper Writing Income

- Supplemental Income

Many people make their entire livings through freelance academic writing. If you are a fast, experienced, and talented writer, your per-hour page rate (how many pages you can write per hour) will be high enough to enable you to make a very good hourly wage; and if you are able to write several hours a day, most days of the week, that should be enough money to live on (depending upon your particular lifestyle).

However, many people simply cannot write that fast. Or, they cannot write that many hours a day, that many days a week, year in and year out. Or, they are good, but not so good that they can command the very high per-page rates paid to writers who can handle high-level projects. Or, they prefer to live a relatively high-end lifestyle that requires more money than even the fastest, most accomplished academic writers can earn.

If any of these reasons applies to your life situation, but you don’t want to give up on freelance writing altogether, here are a few ways you can supplement your writing income while still working from home. (Those of you who feel constrained and claustrophobic at the thought of finding another job you can do from home might think about seeking a part-time job at a coffee shop or retailer, somewhere that will allow you to have some flexibility in your scheduling and still keep some, if not most, of your working hours at home.)

First, think about whether or not you want writing to be how you supplement your income. There are magazines that pay for articles, there’s web content, there are SEO articles to write, manuals to create, grants to prepare – there are lots of ways to write for a living beyond academic writing. Having said that, each and every one of these gigs takes work to land, and it can take awhile to build up a decent income this way. Moreover, you might not want to have two writing jobs – you might want to have something different to do to earn money.

If that’s the case, there are still some options, although the fantasy of endless internet opportunity is not quite as bright and shiny as it might seem. Having said that, you can still sell things on eBay, if you know how to differentiate yourself from the many other people who are selling things on eBay. You can tutor kids and college students from home, and after awhile you can command a decent rate to do so. You can open up shop selling that granola you make that everyone loves, advertise your services as a wedding planner, or offer any one of a million other things that can be offered online.

The challenge with any of these latter items is that you will be responsible to create a website, market your website, monitor your website, and in all other ways ensure that your products or services are being seen by, and are appealing to, the people in your particular niche market. Ebay is attractive because it’s easy to set up a shop under its umbrella, and it’s relatively easy to market your wares there; once you’re out there on your own on the internet, things can be a bit more challenging. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an excellent way to earn money.

You can also do customer service for sites. All those live chats, all those people at the other end of phone calls – you could do those things! Retail companies are often looking for folks to work from home and field phone calls and chats. Such companies often have good opportunities to advance because the turnover can be so high; if you have lasting power, in other words, you have a good chance of moving up the ranks in such companies.

Finally, if you live in an area where such things would be possible, you can consider operating a small supplemental business inside your home, but not online. Tutoring is a perfect example of such a business; so is teaching music, offering organizational services (helping people organize their lives), or providing other such services that people can come to your home to get. You can also sell items on a small scale in your community; that granola can be sold at the local food coop and coffee shops, for example, or you can start a small lunch sandwich business catering to local businesses. Such ways to earn extra money keep you at home base but offer a bit of variety – and a chance to get off the computer for a bit.

Whatever you choose, you can always be happy that freelance academic writing offers you a stable foundation from which to operate: there will always be academic writing projects and if you are a good writer, you will always have work if you want it. Such security is rare in today’s world, and is just another reason why I love freelance academic writing (sometimes with a bit of something else thrown into the mix).