A Complete Guide to Make Money As a Technical Writer
How to Make Money As a Tech Writer
Introduction
Technical writing is a highly demanding skill in the market right now because every organization needs someone to break complex terms into simple words to explain the product to the user. Not only the product but all technical terms and new product features to the user.
Nowadays technical writers closely work with the engineering team of the product to understand the technical aspects of the product. Very few writers sustain themselves in the field of tech writing because here you have focused more on technical terms and content should be user-oriented.
Technical writing focused more on technical terms and content should be user orienetd to understand. 👨🏻🏫
Technical writing involves development, creation and etc. things and as a tech writer, you have to manage multiple things that's why many people failed in their technical writing careers. To become the best at technical writing you have to read more, write more, and understand very well what a product or service is.
You have to be good at product understanding, and writing and always think about the end user side before delivering a piece of content to the community because it's highly essential in terms of tech writing.
Read more + Write more + Understand product = Technical Writing ✍🏻
Why Technical Writing?
It's completely my take on technical writing because I am writing technical content for more than a year now. Every person no matter whether you're a developer or not you should know a basic understanding of writing.
The developer should know how to write technical terms and product guides, tutorials at least the basics of writing are essential for everyone. Writing helps a lot as an individual developer you can share your journey by writing blogs & articles to show to others.
Technical writing is a continuous process of learning, carefully gathering, sifting, organizing, and assessing, all while trying to craft something that makes sense for a user.
Recently, I started my youtube channel and shared why you should start with technical writing and answered basic questions regarding tech writing.
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Tools to Get Started
As a technical writer, you need resources to scale your growth because you can't grow if you are doing everything manually like writing, editing, reviewing, etc takes time and effort. Tools are easy to use and saved a lot of time and effort!
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Grammarly is a great tool for writers to check and enhance their writing skills in the context of grammar mistakes. Now Grammarly is enhancing day by day and it suggests and rephrasing sentences as well.
Notion - A notion is a great tool for planning & managing things for writers. You can schedule complete writing plans, topics, and research materials, and many more things you can do with the notion.
Quetext's - plagiarism checker analyzes your text to identify plagiarism, resolve other writing issues, and build citations with ease.
Canva - You can Create cover images for your articles and blog posts using canva.
Feedly - Research & tech news in one place, lets you get the news you want all in one place.
How To Make Money As a Technical Writer? 🤑
Making money as a technical writer needs to be patience and good writing skills. I started making money with my writing skills by writing articles and blog posts. Below is another way I used to make money as a writer.
1. Write a Technical Post
This way need some previous experience in technical writing and a portfolio you can use your hashnode profile. There are some communities or organizations that need tech writers to write technical articles for them. The topics and content are already available you have to write the concept in your words that's it.
GeeksforGeeks
These are the platforms that will pay you for writing a piece of content for them. The price will carry from one to another platform and the size of the content as well.
2. Freelancing
Freelancing is the best way to explore tech writing but you need proof to show to your freelance gig that you have some experience with writing. There are multiple platforms are available to get your first freelance gig.
3. OpenSource Programs
OpenSource programs such as Google Season of Docs (GSOD) provide you with a complete guide to contributing to open source with your writing skills. There are other project projects also available that pay you as a writer to contribute to their project.
4. Tech Product Blogging
In the market, there are some products that have good quality, and due to lack of promotion and not having proper guides to use they can't grow in the market. These products need some guide to use where you can write and make some commission on every sale.
5. Tech Writers Hackathon
There are programs and hackathons that organize to empower the tech writer community. These hackathons provide you a mentorship, a guide, and also paid-for content that you're going to deliver.
There are other hackathons also available for tech writers you can search and explore more with the communities.
Tech Writing Communities
Communities are the most essential term for every developer, tech writer, and open-source organization. You can find a project partner, mentor, and next job with the help of the community. Below are some communities for writers to join ⬇
Wrapup
Technical writing is more about how better you know the concept and definitely you can make money through it but the best piece of advice is to focus more on learning and then focus on making money.
Skill is always first money second. Try to learn more about how technical writing works and how you can contribute something to it. Reading is the best thing that you can start to become better at technical writing. if you learned something exciting from this article then share it on Twitter.