If you’re trying to find paid blogging gigs, you may be looking at a sea of job listings that pay $10 or $20 a post.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that some writers get much more than that — $100 and up.

This is an odd situation, hm?

Makes you wonder where all those better-paid blogging gigs are hiding…and why your prospects aren’t willing to pay you real rates.

One Freelance Writers Den member wrote me:

I was asked this question recently — why would anyone pay $100 for a blog post?

If a prospective client asks me this, what should I tell him or her? What exactly goes into blogging that makes it worth $100 per post?–Sara

Here’s the thing: There are two basic types of blogging customers. To understand who pays well for blog posts, let’s take a look at their profiles:

Customer 1: SEO seeker with easy topics

Most of the paid-blogging gigs you see on the Problogger job boards and Craigslist fall into this category. Many of the ads you see are from startup companies.

They have a business model that works like this:

• Do key word research on what gets a lot of searches online
• Slap up masses of content on scads of popular topics
• Stuff posts with search engine optimized (SEO) key words
• Put ads on all the pages this content creates
• Search engines send visitors interested in the key words they’ve targeted
• Visitors click the ads and earn the business some affiliate sales revenue

The big problem with this model: The vast majority of sites that try it don’t do very well. Also, Google is cracking down on these junk-content sites and many of these sites are seeing their search rankings decline. That means less ad revenue for them, and less pay for you.

Even Demand Media doesn’t earn much, with huge traffic flowing to its network of sites.

Here, the content quality isn’t really important. The content’s true purpose isn’t to educate or entertain — it’s to get Internet visitors to click to the page. Period. From there, the hope is the reader will be distracted by the ads and start clicking.

These are the sort of posts that content mill writers report they crank out at a rate of three or more articles an hour. A little bit of Internet research, and then blurt it onto the page. Lather, rinse, repeat.

With popular topics, legions of writers exist who could do the work. And the websites need thousands of posts to make their model work.

This is simple math:

Easy assignment many writers can do

+ need for mass amounts of content

+ weak profitability

= low rates

The big thing to know:

These posts are meant for search-engine robots to read.

I’m confident this is the sort of customer Sara was talking to, who was astounded to hear her ask for $100 a blog post.

Because quality expectations are so low (despite endless requests for ‘high-quality posts’ from these very clients), and the possibility of earning well from the post so slim, it’s not possible for these sites to pay fair wages.

What should you tell these clients when they balk at your professional rates?

Nothing.

They are not the right kind of customer to pay what you want to earn.

You’re banging your head against a jagged brick wall here. The wall is not going to give, but you will get some nasty, frustrating bumps that will hurt your business, because you’re wasting time.

Instead, move on.

Which brings us to…

Customer 2: Reputation builder with sophisticated topic

This second customer has a completely different reason for blogging. Their business model works like this:

• They sell a real product or service in the real world
• They are established, profitable, and successful
• What they sell is complex, expensive, and changes frequently
• They need to explain their thing in detail and get customers excited about it
• Their industry is competitive
• Often, the customer is a sophisticated business owner or executive
• Blog posts establish them as an authority in their niche
• High-value, informative posts help them attract new customers to their site
• Blog posts help build their email list of marketing leads
• The business makes more sales off their growing list

To sum up:

These posts are meant for people to read.

The content of these posts is both critically important and difficult to do right.

Not every writer can blog for these companies, which sell everything from software to surety bonds.

The blogger will need some understanding of the industry to write interesting, informative posts customers in that industry will find valuable.

These customers also want bloggers with a proven track record of driving traffic and engagement — getting a lot of comments and retweets. They’re hoping you will do the same for their blog.

This is the profile of a $100-a-post blog client.

When you quote this type of prospect a pro rate, they will think it’s fine. In my experience, most will approve a $100 rate without a blink.

They are making good money, and in the great scheme of their marketing budget, what you’re asking for is pin money.

Few writers go after these gigs, though, because they are rarely found on a job ad.

You have to go out and find these clients. But when you look at the difference in how writers are paid and treated between these two types of clients, isn’t it worth doing a little prospecting?

Would you like to get paid $100 a post or more as a professional blogger?

I often get asked what the secret is to finding clients willing to pay those rates.

All the ads on Craigslist seem to pay $20 bucks a post, maybe $40 if you’re lucky.

Here’s the difference: The good-paying blogging gigs are not waiting on an ad.

But once you know how to get them, it’s a fairly straightforward process.

You need to do three simple things if you want to find better pay as a freelance blogger:

1. Have a strong personal blog
2. Find the right prospects
3. Make the right pitch to them

Unfortunately, most freelancers are messing up at least one of these steps.

So let’s look them over one by one so you can nail this.

1. Making your blog a sales tool

Does your blog resemble a business blog? You want to set up your blog to make business owners feel that you understand business blogging when they visit.

That means:

• Clean, uncluttered design (take that widget of your tweets off)
• Single, focused niche topic
• Scannable posts with bullets or subheads
• Strong headlines with key words
• Photos half-column wide at the top of each post
• Social buttons are there and getting used
• Comments are happening

If your blog is a random mess, you’re not going to be able to convince businesses with real budgets for blogging that you’re their writer.

So clean up your blog and make it as strong as you can. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to discover the hidden market for paid blogging.

2. Find the ideal business blogging prospect

You’ve probably already figured out that to find better pay in blogging, you’ll need to proactively prospect, rather than responding to online job ads.

Instead of random websites, you’ll be looking for real businesses with a track record of successfully selling a lucrative business or service. Usually, they’ll be big enough to have at least a few employees.

Next, you have to recognize the ideal situation for landing a blogging gig. I get emails all the time that say this:

I found this small business in my town, and they don’t have a blog yet.

I’m meeting with them, trying to talk them into starting a blog I could write for them.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Companies that don’t have a blog yet are not good prospects.

They do not understand how blogging could help their site rank better in search and bring them new customers — or they’d be blogging.

So you begin at the dawn of blog time here, explaining what a blog is and what it could do for their business. This is going to be a long sales process…too long to pencil out for you as a freelancer trying to make a living.

Even if you can talk the business owner into it, there are too many steps between that light bulb going on and this company being in a position to hire you to blog.

They’ve got to get their webmaster to add a blog. They’ve got to design it. They have to name it. They have to pick a topic for it.

In general, it’s not going to happen. At least not in time to pay your rent.

Instead of grabbing any old business you see that doesn’t have a blog, take the easy route.

Here’s your ideal prospect:

• The company has a blog already…but it’s abandoned. Updates haven’t happened for a long while, or there’s only a new post once every few months.
• Their business is something you understand — you’ve used their product, worked in their industry, or written about their topic before

Bingo! This is the sweet spot.

This company understands blogging. They have a blog. They have tried to post on their blog.

And they’ve realized nobody in-house has the time to do it.

Or they had the time, but they hate writing. Or don’t understand blogging. Or ran out of post ideas.

Maybe they tried a few posts, didn’t get traffic, and gave up.

They wish they had a happening blog, but the owner is overwhelmed with all the other responsibilities of running a business. So now they have an embarrassing, dusty, out-of-date blog that’s more of a hindrance to their business growth than a help.

If they knew where they could find a really talented blogger, they’d jump on them — but they don’t have time to look.

This is where you come in. By targeting businesses you know, you can make the case that you are the answer to their problem.

3. How to pitch the owner of a dead blog

Once you’ve identified these prime prospects, from here it’s easy. You call or send them an email and say something like this:

Dear business owner:

As a freelance writer who specializes in X, I ran across your company recently. Love what you’re doing with (product/service).

I loved your [website feature], but the one thing I noticed is that your blog isn’t being updated. If you’d like to attract new visitors and convert them into customers with interesting, relevant blog posts that get shared in social media, I’d love to help you with regular weekly posts.

Check out what I’m doing on my blog (or this blog I do for X client) — then give me a call if you’d like to kick your blog back into gear.

Sincerely,

I’ve seen a lot of writers I’ve mentored get great, steady blogging gigs pitching businesses with abandoned blogs. One writer I know even signed up his local tattoo parlor, for once-weekly posts at $100 each!

If you’d like to find some steady, ongoing blogging clients at nice rates, take a look at the successful businesses in your town — the ones big enough to have a marketing budget. Or look at bigger businesses nationally, within your chosen niche.

Then, start hunting for those ghost-town blogs. Those businesses need your help.

How do you find paid blogging gigs? Leave a comment and share your tips.

It’s been more than a year since I began paying for guest posts here on the blog.

I’d like to report on how that experiment has worked, and how guest posting is going to work on this blog in future.

First off: I’m proud to say I paid $1,600 to guest posters last year!

It feels good to be paying other writers. Paying for posts also has many other benefits.

Going from free to paid posts meant I attracted more quality writers and great post ideas. I’ve loved the fresh success stories and strategy posts I’ve been able to present by guest posters.

I don’t know everything about freelance writing, especially about what it’s like to break in today. So I think it adds to the value of this site to present success stories, tips, and techniques from new writers.

Paying for posts is a marketing bonanza

My blog has been mentioned on many popular blogs in roundup posts about paying markets — like this one and more recently, this one.

The paid guest posters also tend to become big fans of this blog. I see them retweeting this blog all the time.

I’ve met many fascinating writers and formed some new friendships.

This year, I will probably accept more guest posts than last year. I usually published two a month last year, and now I’m striving to put up three or four a month.

So that’s the good news. Paid guest posting has been a successful strategy for my blog. I consider every dollar I’ve paid out to be money well spent.

But there was a downside

That said, there are some real challenges to accepting guest posts.

I get many junk pitches daily from link-seeking websites, riddled with basic English errors.

Few writers can manage to follow my guidelines and submit a headline and outline.

I do tire of explaining that I am not going to read or publish the pre-written post writers have sent me. (I’ve since learned these submissions are often duplicate content anyway, so that was a good instinct on my part!)

Even when writers can do the pitch process right and get an assignment, I’d often receive posts that needed substantial editing.

With a few submissions, I ended up refusing to publish their submission because it either wasn’t what I assigned, or would have been more work to get in shape for publication than writing a post myself.

I felt bad about saying “no” to these writers. But I’m committed to the quality of what I present here.

The idea of having guests is partly to save your own writing time, but it often doesn’t work out that way.

I’m not the only one who’s getting tired of playing editor to all comers — Kristi Hines of Kikolani recently made the decision to stop accepting guest posts on her blog and write them all herself.

On Problogger, you can now only pitch by invitation.

I thought hard about it, and decided I don’t like either of those options.

But I have to make some changes to make the guest-post process less time-consuming, and also to make sure I get quality posts.

My new rules of guest posting

Here’s what I noticed about guest posts as the year wore on: The vast majority of the pitches I accepted were either from members of Freelance Writers Den, or from students in Jon Morrow’s blogging class.

The ones that were more work — or flat-out hopeless — came from writers who were not part of either my community or Jon’s program.

So that’s my new policy: I am accepting guest post pitches only from members of one of those two programs.

That leaves the field open to over 1,500 writers to pitch this blog. I think we’ll still see plenty of fresh, useful tips on how to earn more from our guests.

And hopefully I’ll save a lot of time in the editing process, which will allow me to work on projects such as ebooks that will benefit readers, too.

There’s an art to pitching a popular blog and to guest posting, I’ve learned, that few new bloggers understand.

Taking a quality training program that teaches you how to do it can be well worthwhile, if you’re serious about blogging.

I’m looking forward to seeing more great guest posts as we go through this year.

What do you think of my new guest post policy? I’d love your feedback in the comments.

by Jessica Ruane

Like every aspiring child writer, I grew up believing I’d be the next great American novelist.

I had dreams of sitting out on the balcony of my beach house, effortlessly composing the next bestseller, taking the occasional break to read letters from fans and devoted readers. Oh, how adorably clueless I was.

As I got older, family and friends showed their support for my chosen career path by buying me countless books on writing.

Ironically, their innocent encouragement soon became the source of my disillusionment.The books were full of horror stories, caveats, and warnings on how the odds of becoming a published author were not in my favor.

I felt destined to fail

In college, I took countless creative writing classes, only to hear the same thing from my professors. Although my teachers were all talented wordsmiths, they were all “failed” writers themselves.

My vision of life as a bohemian poet living on the beach was fading fast. The future did not look promising.

Slowly but surely, I gave up.

Blogging is for babies

I know it sounds impossible, but I didn’t even hear about blogging — much less blogging for pay — until after I graduated from college.

The “elite” world of creative writing viewed blogging as a desperate author’s low-rent attempt to attract an audience.

Snarky remarks from classmates about the dire consequences of democratizing the publishing process kept me away from blogging. I was resigned to filling notebooks in solitude with my “sub-par” writing.

Embracing the blog

After a while, the notebooks got old. The part-time jobs were getting tiresome. Getting my M.F.A. seemed pointless.

Occasionally, I’d muster up the determination to apply for writing jobs posted on Craigslist.

One day, I heard back about a copywriting internship. I was hired—my first job as a writer!

For the job, I needed to write web copy, press releases (nothing I couldn’t handle), and—the dreaded “B-Word”—blogs.

I didn’t know if I could do it. I went to school to write poetry, not blogs!

Then I realized something wonderful. All my creative writing skills — poetry, short fiction, characterization, and imagery — can be applied directly to blog writing.

Why had nobody told me this before?

I had been so stressed out over learning how to blog, that I didn’t even realize that I already knew how.

How I use poetry and prose in my blogs

Alliteration in headlines

Headings have to be catchy and click-worthy and irresistibly juicy, but there’s no reason they can’t do all that and sound beautiful, too. Tapping into my poetry background allows me to write headlines that just ooze with layers of meaning.

My favorite approach is to use alliteration to give headlines added flair. For Example:

Your surfaces are too superficial, so I will use your slippery sides to slide to and fro.

Traditionally, alliteration is used in lines of poetry (like the one above) to create rhythm. You can appropriate alliteration (get it?) to help you write beautiful headlines.

Imagery enlivens dull topics

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you’ve heard the phrase: “Show, don’t tell.”

I find the use of imagery especially helpful when writing about a boring topic.

Recently, I needed to blog about a census data feature on my company’s website. I was trying to convince users that our way of delivering census data was superior to a government website’s.

Are you still awake? Here’s how I spiced this up:

I wrote, “ [On a government website], trying to find information on a specific neighborhood is like swimming through an ocean searching for a drop of water. By the end of the day, you’re washed up on some deserted beach, shivering, exhausted, with blurred vision and burning eyes.”

If the subject matter of your copy is bone dry, some vivid images can give it a splash of personality.

Creative writing workshops toughen you up

When you take a creative writing class, you go through a process called “workshopping.”

When it is your turn, you read your piece aloud, and then sit there while everyone takes turns telling you everything they don’t like about it. All you can do is sit back and listen, as your hard work is eviscerated.

It’s really kind of a masochistic process. If you ever want to see a grown man cry, watch him workshop a piece of poetry.

Traumatic though it may be, it makes you a better writer. Workshopping teaches writers how to abandon their egos and focus on improvement. I am able to take heavy criticism from editors in stride, because I apply the lessons I learned when it was my turn to be brutally workshopped.

But does it make me happy?

Yes. I can honestly say that I’m happy I chose to produce web content and blog, as opposed to pursuing an M.F.A.

Not only do I make more money than my friends who are still stuck in grad school, I get to fulfill my lifelong dream of writing for a living.

Do you think blogging is the new frontier of writing? Can’t wait to read your comments!

Jessica Ruane is a freelance blogger living in San Diego, CA. She writes about any topic under the sun from social media and online dating, to cat behavior (no, seriously).