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Fiverr is a popular freelancing platform where buyers can browse services from freelancers around the world. But is it a viable path for writers looking to make worthwhile money? I’ve spent the last seven years finding out. I’ve completed more than 4,000 orders on Fiverr, achieving Top Rated Seller status and earning over six figures in total income. At my peak, I was consistently generating $2-3k USD per month from freelance writing, all while working remotely in New Zealand. These are my main takeaways. Fiverr’s biggest benefit: Buyers come to you Unlike traditional freelancing, where you spend hours pitching potential clients, Fiverr is built like a marketplace. You create a “gig” describing your services, then buyers can find and purchase it. The greatest benefit I’ve found is that Fiverr exposes you to a massive audience of prospective buyers actively searching for freelancers. As of June 2026, there are 2.9 million annual active buyers on the platform. While there is a “briefs” system where buyers post project descriptions and sellers can reply with offers, over 95% of my orders came from people organically discovering my gigs while searching the platform. That doesn’t mean you can simply create a gig and wait More

If you are interested in writing for someone, take the time to learn what they are about. As much as we’d like to think the relationship is simply one of they need writing and you write, it isn’t. The whole human factor gets involved, and the sooner you realize that, the better your odds. Magazines/Online Publications Do you read them? Do you even know how often they publish? How large is their readership and what kind of people comprise their market? Read their masthead, study their ads, subscribe to their online missives, and follow them on social media. They like to think you are interested in them for more than making a sale. They like long-term relationships just as you do. Agents Do you follow them on social media? Do you read their blogs or newsletters? Do you pay attention to who they represent? Are they regional? Have you read the books of anyone they’ve represented? Where did they go to school? Where have they lived? Where are they from? Publishers Again, do you follow their social media? Have you signed up for their newsletters to learn about their latest releases? Who have they published in the past? What genres More

Being recognized for being original has to be one of the best compliments there is. Such recognition is a sign of several things: 1) You like yourself. 2) You enjoy thinking and creating. 3) You enjoy feeling liberated and not confined. 4) You’re willing to step out and just see what happens. 5) You like learning from the highs of success and the lows of failure. 6) You like owning what you do. 7) You don’t like walking in someone’s shadow. 8) You don’t quickly take up fads. I could go on and on. FundsforWriters was original and continues to be so. I continued writing my novels after agents in New York rejected and ignored them. There are other choices I made and continue to make that probably aren’t the norm or follow the status quo, some of which have worked well while others did not. But there’s something freeing about being in charge of all that. The success is mine and the failure is mine. There’s nobody to blame but myself, putting me in charge of correcting, discarding, and embracing. When you work for yourself, you live to take care of yourself first. To be a writer, you own More

Landing pages are crucial to making money and growing an audience online. Unlike a homepage with multiple links and choices, a landing page is built with one goal: driving a single commercial action, like selling a book, collecting newsletter sign-ups, or booking a course spot. Every element of an effective landing page needs to earn its place. Decades of research has gone into understanding how small changes in structure and wording can turn a casual visitor into a paying customer. The Rule of One High-converting landing pages strictly follow the Rule of One: •    Target one audience, even if you have many (e.g. self-published fiction authors needing a fast proofread) •    One powerful offer, e.g. ‘24-Hour Web Launch Proofing Package’ •    A single call to action, e.g. ‘Book your place’ or ‘Order now’ Remove friction by stripping way other links and non-essential information and not asking for info in forms you don’t immediately need. Message match Your page is the endpoint of a user journey that typically started when a user clicked on a social post, ad or search result page. To prevent instant departures, your landing page must instantly show they have come to the right place. If I click on a More

The short answer to the title question is, “No.” The longer answer is, “No, but it would be extremely difficult to do so without one.” Agents exist for several reasons. Below, let’s outline: 1) what benefit an agent brings; 2) a few different agent scenarios to consider; 3) what lit agents with Hollywood connections are looking for; and 4) ways to navigate around the agent issue if you’re having trouble landing one. Why An Agent First and foremost, agents have the keys to the castle – the castle being Hollywood, which is fraught with walls and moats. Studios, streamers, networks, production companies – they all have very strict policies against unsolicited submissions. Most will only read your material if it’s submitted by a bona fide agent. Second, agents are experts at understanding book option and licensing deals. They know the questions to ask when valuing these deals and how to get the best bang for your buck. They can also bring in entertainment lawyers who will work with them to protect your underlying story rights, including subsidiary rights to adapt your story into sequels or other mediums like audiobooks, graphic novels, etc. Different Agent Arrangements If you’re already repped by More

Say you’ve spent a decade producing whitepapers on fintech trends and case studies about enterprise software. Now you want to tell your LinkedIn audience you’ve signed with a small press for a dragon fantasy trilogy. Will they think less of you or stop giving you work? Corporate clients know me as a b2b copywriter, so admitting I was also a fiction writer felt strange at first. Most of that was just imposter syndrome, the familiar fear of being caught out as a fraud. The answer is to push on. Writers need people to promote to, and this crowd already knows you. Remember businesses are just people Your LinkedIn contacts may have serious job titles, impressive employers, and equally impressive thoughts about their industry, but they are just people, with all sorts of unexpected interests and aspirations. I know one senior industry client whose secret passion is skateboarding. Another loves to make jewelry. They’ll likely respond to your alternate writing news with encouragement and approval. We’re all quietly nosey about what other people are up to out of hours, and clients will find you more memorable if they know a bit more about your hinterland. The power of vulnerability Sharing this More

Many writers are uncomfortable discussing money or selling their work. But, like it or not, we are salespeople. Writers pitch for work, trawl for new clients, network, and negotiate. Over my career, I’ve spent a lot of time with salespeople. They’re energetic, resilient and resourceful, and many of their ideas are useful to writers, too. Feeding the funnel Salespeople use the analogy of a funnel for their activity. The top is wide, where you pour all your leads: contacts from networking events, names from social media, editors you’d love to write for, publications in which you’d love to list your byline. As the funnel narrows, leads fall away. The ones that remain warm turn into prospects (people who’ve shown real interest). The idea is to keep the top filled with new leads so you don’t end up with a dry pipeline down the line when you need it most. The warmer the lead, the more attention it’s worth, which is where writers often fail. It’s also worth ‘qualifying out’ people who are anyone not interested, to save wasted effort. Does this agency even use freelancers? Does this company have a content budget? Sites like Who Pays Writers and The Freelancer’s Year’s pitch tracker give More

Do you need to make a living as a writer and earn an income but suffer with regular writing procrastination? I’ve a few resources you can try that have been game-changers for me. During six weeks of using them, I’ve written two short stories (a genre I’d never tried before), two web features, a health story, and edited a ‘real life’ interview. The health story pitch – and subsequent feature – was accepted by the Editor of the UK Daily Mail’s Femail section. ‘Femail’ comes out on Thursdays, ‘Good Health’ on Tuesdays. The articles are extraordinary personal experiences, overcoming hardship, unusual family situations, successful weight-loss journeys or managing health issues. They pay upwards of £750. UK’s monthly Prima magazine accepted my short story. They accept one a month and pay £100. Best of British magazine will be using my interview. My web feature will be appearing on FundsforWriters ($100). My bank balance has a healthy £1,000 from this short period. I’ve got my focus and motivation back, too. Here’s how. The Pomodoro technique, a way of writing in forced time-management chunks, has been around for years. While this is a great idea for writers, it can be difficult to manage alone if, like me, you’re More

When summer rolls around, commercial writing work often dries up. Don’t panic – use the quieter months to tidy up the backend of your operation in time for the autumn rush. Here’s a handy checklist. 1. Overhaul your website and CV Check that all your latest publications, client names, and portfolio links are up to date and working. This review can get you thinking too: as Elna Cain says in her advice on summer slowness, ‘sometimes I’ll realize my positioning has shifted and certain pages no longer match the kind of clients I actually want to attract now’. 2. Refresh your email signature Check it’s updated with links to your latest book or a new service so that every email you send acts as subtle marketing. Do you need different signatures for different hats you wear? Now’s the time to sort that. 3. Audit your tech subscriptions Check you’re not paying for things you don’t need, like duplicate storage fees, or subscriptions to things like Adobe or ChatGPT you don’t really use. Recently I discovered I was still paying for indemnity insurance insisted on by a client I no longer work for. How about web-hosting and email services? Some services can More

I follow the newsletter and website Plagiarism Today, a long time, tried and true resource on plagiarism, and most recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the writing world. Recently they ran a post on How to Prove That Your Writing is Not AI, and it is most excellent. The tools are wonderful. Now you have no excuses. Why do I say that? Because in writing groups all over social media, writers are justifying using AI in writing and editing because if they didn’t use it, they’d be accused of using it anyway, since AI detectors are flawed. The recent incident where Jerry Falade lost a $2 million deal with Minotaur Books because his agents and publisher questioned his usage (or non-usage, depending on who you listen to), he could not prove he did NOT use AI. If you landed a deal with a publisher, or if you contracted a gig with a magazine or other entity, could you prove you didn’t use AI when there are so many writers using it these days? Would you dare to be one of those writers who uses AI anyway and cries foul if challenged, thinking they can’t prove it anyway? Read this article. It has so many good More