Introduction to Internet Writing Markets

Writers establish their reputations on the web by building a strong brand, or writer's platform. Not sure where to start? In this lesson, you'll learn about credentials and the important part they play in making a profit from your writing. Then you'll explore the different ways you can connect with readers or clients on the web with a website or blog and by getting involved in social media. This lesson will help you decide what will work best for your needs too!

You'll start this lesson by looking at the place where most things begin on the Internet—search engines. You'll look at some techniques that you can use to search for potential outlets for your writing. Because you want to reach as many readers as possible, no matter why you produce content, you'll view some resources that will help you pick the best sites for that content. Then you'll take a look at submission guidelines and publishing agreements. There's lots to consider before you send your work off to an editor, and this lesson will help you with those decisions.

Think you're ready to get published? You will be when you finish this lesson! You'll start by creating a writer's résumé that will highlight your credentials and target each subject area you're interested in. Then you'll find out how to pick the publishing credits that will get you the most attention from publishers. If you don't have any credits yet, you'll discover how to make nonpaying markets work for you. Finally, you'll go through the submission process so that you can get your writing into the hands of editors.

Publishing with paying markets can be a great way to boost your writing income. Are you interested in publishing in online magazines or e-journals? Maybe you wonder what publications are the best fit for your personal area of expertise? Or perhaps you dream of tapping into the corporate market and landing some high-paying gigs. If you're a whiz at coming up with witty slogans or writing amazing bios, you'll learn how you can sell those, too. This lesson is all about finding and connecting with paying markets.

In this lesson, you'll learn about the most important secret on the web: passive income. What's that? Well, a way that your writing can keep earning money for years after it has been published. You may think that sounds too good to be true, but it really exists. All you have to do is add moneymaking options to the content you publish—here you'll get to look specifically at publishing with revenue-sharing markets, and you won't even need to learn any additional technical skills.

Some of the most successful and popular sites on the web aren't owned by Fortune 500 companies. They're run by bloggers and content producers who started out just like you—people with a passion to write about something that interested them. In this lesson, you'll read about ways to use that passion to create a blog or content site to monetize your self-published content, no matter what you want to write about. You'll also look at copyright protections for your self-published content and discover ways to develop content on a business website to attract more surfers.

Would you like to have your writing read by people from around the world? E-publishers can make that happen! Whether you want to publish novels or nonfiction or illustrated picture books, the technology is now available to make publishing and marketing your own e-books easy, too. Readers are choosing e-books at least as often as paperbacks or hardcovers, so you'll want to know about this important aspect of publishing. In this lesson, you'll explore your many options as an author. You'll receive a checklist that you can use to help you select the publishing path that suits your needs. Even if you've never considered writing a book, you'll see how e-books can be valuable tools in your content marketing and business branding.

Do you enjoy making up stories? The Internet may not seem a likely place for creative writing—but it can be if you know where to find the markets. In this lesson, you'll start out by looking at fanfiction and at how copyright laws affect your ability to publish your own work using worlds that other writers have created. Writing a book can take a long time, so the lesson will also talk about publishing your work in serial form so you can earn as you write. You'll also look at ways you can put together a campaign to raise funds up front to write your book. Sound interesting? The lesson will discuss two examples of authors who've used crowdfunding to finance their projects. If you write short fiction and poetry, you'll find lots of nooks in cyberspace, both paying and nonpaying, where you can publish, too. Additionally, you'll see how to use these markets to build your brand and promote books you've already published!

Would you like to be part of the biggest advancement in the history of humankind? In this lesson, you'll learn how! Until the twentieth century, knowledge doubled roughly each century. But by 2015, it doubled nearly every year. The reason, of course, is the Internet, and you and your fellow nonfiction writers are making it all happen. While you've already examined lots of ways to publish nonfiction, in this lesson you'll explore niche areas such as article directories, writing as a guide, sharing your opinion in various ways, and providing training. You won't stop at the written word either: You'll also look at how you can earn income with images and videos.

How many answers do you look for in a day? If you're like most writers, it may be dozens, from a synonym for a word to a statistic to support an argument. In fact, research is integral to the writing process these days, and while good search engine skills simplify things, sometimes you need other resources. From information compiled in databases to email interviews with experts, there are many ways to get the job done, and they'll all be covered in this lesson. Of course, once you've found some interesting facts, you need to be able to save them so you can find them again later. You'll discover some tools to do that in this lesson, too. Before you finish up, you'll also take a final look at copyright laws and how they relate to using research.

It's time to bring everything that's been covered in the course together. In this lesson, you'll do just that—with everything from exploring tools of the trade, to filling in a checklist of market options, to setting your publishing goals. Planning is the key to making your long-term vision for your career a reality, so be prepared to spend some time on this part of the process. As Woodrow Wilson said, "You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement."