We put word after word together for the web. Blogs, ebooks, website copy — even status updates are written for a purpose. But the question of that purpose is a little more complicated than you might think at first glimpse.

It’s All About The Money

Saying that we all write for money is a true statement, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Just how we expect to profit from our online writing varies. You might expect to sell your writing outright — perhaps an ebook that targets a specific niche. Or maybe your articles are meant to create a receptive audience for a product. There are other ways to monetize your writing, of course, but I’ve found these two to be especially important — unless you like writing for the few cents AdSense can send your way.

Content As Commodity

The market for books, articles and other written materials is constantly growing, despite groans about the ‘death of print.’ Fiction remains something of a tough sell, but if you can match an ebook with an audience, they’ll fly off the metaphorical shelves faster than you would ever imagine. It takes marketing, expertise and a well-written ebook to make a well-selling product, but it is certainly a possibility.

Content As Marketing

A solid ebook isn’t always sold outright, though: it can be an effective tool to sell another product. Content, for instance, that describes new uses for a product that has been on the market for a while often creates a renewed interest in that product. Using content as a marketing tool is growing in popularity because of its relatively low price: the cost of an article is the same, no matter how many people you send it to or how many read it.

Making Money With Content

Neither of these two options are more valid ways of making money with content, in my mind. But they require very different approaches, and can’t always use the same content.