Introduction to Internet Writing Markets (Self-Paced Tutorial)

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1

Web Publishing Overview

In this lesson, you'll start by taking a quick tour of the publishing opportunities on the web and the many ways to earn income with your writing. You'll find out which ones give you the most control over your content and which ones pay the best and then meet some writers who've used the web to become very successful! Each of these writers has done an amazing job of carving out a niche that suits their interests and skills. Whether you've been working in the traditional publishing world for a few decades, or are just taking your first steps toward becoming a working writer, you'll find lots of great information and inspiration in this course!

Get Established on the Web

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!

Finding Internet Writing Markets

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.

Get Established in Publishing

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 notice from editors. 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.

Paying Markets

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.

Revenue-Sharing 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 money-making 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.

Self-Publishing

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.

Book Publishing

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.

Creative Writing Markets

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 funding 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!

Niche Nonfiction Markets

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.

Research

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.

Your Publishing Plan

It's time to bring together 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."