So you want to make $100,000 per year doing what you love. Working as a full-time freelance writer or author. Let’s break this down.

To be a six-figure writer, you’ll need to make about $8,400 per month. If you work 50 weeks per year and take two weeks off, that’s $2,000 per week. Is it possible to make $100,000 per year as a writer? Yes, but it’s difficult. You’ll likely need to work more than 40 hours per week to do it.

If you’re willing to put in the work that it takes, in this article I’ll teach you how you can become a six-figure writer or author.

Earning $100,000 Per Year As A Freelance Writer

If you want to earn a six-figure income as a freelance writer, I’m going to assume that you’ll be able to consistently write about 6,000 per words every weekday.

That’s a lot to do consistently. But if you can write 1,000 words per hour, that leaves you about two hours per day for editing, formatting, and admin tasks. And you can still do it within a regular 40 hour work week.

To earn a six-figure income writing 6,000 words per day, you’ll need to be charging at least 7 cents per word. This also assumes that you’ll have a constantly full workload, and don’t have days or weeks of downtime during the year. Which is a hard thing to accomplish on its own.

If you are charging a rate lower than 7 cents per word, you’d need to write more than 6,000 words per day. At that point, I think you’re asking for burnout. I don’t think very many professional writers can keep up with 6,000 words every weekday for an entire year.

Keep in mind that you’ll also need to do revisions, invoicing, emailing clients, finding new clients, and other tasks on top of just writing.

So once you’ve established yourself as a freelance writer, it’s technically possible to earn more than $100,000 per year. But I believe that would put you in the top 1% of all freelance writers, and I don’t think many writers could keep up that routine for more than a year or two without getting burned out.

Do you have what it takes? Read my article Are You Good Enough? 6 Signs You’d Make A Great Freelance Writer to find out!

Starting Your Own Content Agency

After you’ve worked as a freelance writer for a few years, starting your own content agency and hiring other freelance writers might be the next natural step in your business.

Personally I haven’t taken this step because I just want to write, and not deal with managing other people. I’m satisfied with the amount that I’m currently earning.

But if you’re working alone, there are only so many words that you can write in a day. So your income can end up getting capped. If you find there’s more demand for your writing than what you can do yourself, it might be time to hire some other writers to write for you.

You may still want to do some freelance writing work yourself, and only outsource the more basic tasks to other writers. Or you may outsource all of the work and take on more of a management or editor role in your business.

If you can get clients willing to pay 10 cents per word and get other freelancers to write for you at 5 cents per word, you get to keep the difference in between. You’re providing a valuable service by matching up clients with writers, and your income at that point is really only limited by how many well-paying clients you can get.

Of course some of your work will shift from writing by yourself to supervising others. You’ll need to proofread and check the work of your writers for plagiarism before submitting it to clients. You’ll need to do all the communication with clients and foster relationships to allow your freelancers to just write. That can end up being a full-time job on its own. At some point as your agency grows, you may even need to start hiring other editors and coordinators to help you out.

If you think you’d like management, it might be the way to go. But if you’re like me and like the writing more than the business side of things, you may want to just stick with working on your own.

Earning $100,000 Per Year As An Author

If you’re an author, I think you need to be putting out at least one book each month to have a decent shot at making a six-figure income.

Most authors aren’t disciplined enough to take on such a big task. Some people take a year or more just to write a single novel! But there are authors out there like Chris Fox who are making a six-figure income from fiction, year after year.

To put out a book every month, that means you’ll need to write about 3,800 to 5,000 words per day. That doesn’t include plotting, editing, proofreading, formatting, or advertising your book.

Every book that you publish doesn’t guarantee success, it just gives you a shot. If you put out a book every month, you get 12 shots per year to hit it big and figure out your formula for success. But expect for first book or two to completely flop and hardly sell any copies.

There could be a number of reasons for that. Maybe your cover sucks, maybe it’s your writing, or maybe you need to invest money into advertising before you’ll see a return. Expect to learn by trying and failing the first couple of times to figure it out.

As far as the math behind self-publishing goes… if you’re selling your ebook for $3.99, you get to keep about $2.75 of that after Amazon takes their cut. You’ll need to either sell a little over 3,000 copies of each book on average. Or more likely, you’ll need to get one or two books to hit it big and end up selling about 40,000 copies of books in total over the course of the year.

That doesn’t include expenses like cover design, outsourcing your formatting and proofreading, or ads either. If you make $100,000 in revenue from your books, expect that you’ll need to use a decent chunk of that to pay for the creation and success of your book.

Is Kindle Publishing Still Worth It In 2020? Read my post to find out!

Earning $100,000 Per Year From Your Own Blog or Niche Site

If you’re just getting started with your own niche site or blog, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to make $100,000 in your first year unless you go completely viral.

In my experience, it takes about 6 to 9 months for a blog post to really hit its peak number of views. So even if you put out 100 blog posts today, you likely aren’t going to start seeing the results for almost a year.

It also takes time to generate content, and you’ll only be putting out a few blog posts per week most likely. If you’re writing a blog or niche website full-time, you’ll be able to consistently pump out about 3 or 4 articles per day. Some articles will be shorter or longer than others. So in a year, you can produce about 700 pieces of content if you really have the willpower and determination to stick with it. Which can be tough, especially in the first months when you aren’t seeing any results.

That doesn’t include the time spent setting up your site, uploading and formatting posts in WordPress, finding images, setting up affiliate ads and links, etc. I’m assuming you’re also doing all of that stuff on the weekends, and writing during the week.

Each blog post that you write is highly variable. Especially in the beginning when you haven’t figured out what works and what doesn’t. Some posts might miss the mark entirely, and others may end up generating the bulk of your traffic because of sheer luck.

In your first year, your blog or site may only generate about $1-2 each month per post on average, from my own experience. So about $10,000 per year once all 700 articles are written in the first year and have time to rank.

With time, you can get on better ad networks, use more affiliate links, and launch and promote your own products. But that’s more of a long term plan. Expect it to take at least a couple of years before you’ll be able to earn a six-figure income from your blog or website.

The good part about writing blog posts or books compared to freelancing is that they’re more passive and will continue to sell over time though. With freelancing, you just get one lump payment and need to constantly be finding more work. Although books and blogs will both taper off over time if you don’t maintain them too.

Should You Start A Blog? My article will explain when and why it makes sense!

Conclusion

It’s definitely possible to make a six-figure income as a writer or author. But it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme or easy money by any means.

You’ll need to spend some time honing your craft. You shouldn’t expect to make much in the first year or two if you’re just getting started. But if you stick with it, there’s lots of potential to earn a good income.

To make $100,000 per year as a writer, you’ll need to write for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And you’ll need to have the skills and experience to work effectively and land those clients. Stuff like SEO, keyword and market research are a must.

Most people don’t get into writing for the money, but because they love it.

I think most people can comfortably earn $30,000 to $50,000 per year with most kinds of writing.

For me, it’s all about work-life balance. What’s the point of earning $100,000 per year if you’re constantly burned out and miserable?

I’d much rather earn $30,000 per year working 4 hours a day, and play video games or do other things I enjoy in the afternoon instead.