How to Make Money Out of Your Storytelling Skills

Maria Estrada

You have the real aptitude for storytelling and writing. And you’re the type who can sit around the campfire and conjure compelling stories right out of your head. People love to listen to you.

You may be wondering now if there’s a way to monetize your skill, besides hitting a best-selling jackpot one day. Good thing for you, because there is! If you’re a freelance writer who’s stuck in the same situation, this article is for you.

Your success as a writer often relies on your storytelling ability. Whether you are copywriting, doing a blogger outreach, writing fiction, serious income means telling stories.

Write a Story that Sells

The majority of storytelling writers starve because they limit their horizons to the few magazines and surviving anthologies that accept short stories. Even if the story gets accepted, the pay is usually insufficient.

Real income doesn’t come from publications. It comes from decent-sized businesses. They are the clients that pay well for good stories. It’s a prerequisite for companies to tell stories because native ads are no longer sufficient to people. They want something personal.

Below are the doable ways that freelance writers like you can use to weave marketable stories and generate more money.

Identify Your Audience

The battle starts here: Your audience base. No matter if you’re a rockstar writer and storyteller, if you don’t understand your audience well, there will be no connection and conversions. The game is over even before it starts.

You need to find out what your audience aspire, cherish, fear, despise and admire. Apprehending your audience in a personal level evens the playing field for you. It also helps you reach your target market, which leads to a more genuine story and facile leadership of the community you build. And who knows? it could lead to your business card printing as well, provided it’s suitable for your particular niche.

Choose Your Frame

Choosing the right frame correlates to who your audience is. When you know your audience well enough, you’ll understand the perspectives they have. And, when you understand these aspects and the things they believe, you can frame your stories accordingly. It is a definite advantage over your competitors.

Examples of competing worldviews with different word frames:

Fitness aficionado versus Gym Buff
Innovative versus Moonbat
Businessman versus Bachelor

You might not get all the conversions you want at the other end of the spectrum, but your audience base will help share your content and infiltrate other groups, and this is where monetary growth comes.

Choose Your Premise

Choosing the right premise for your story is important because it’s the structure that yields the conclusion you want to achieve. It’s also the conveyance of framed messages with relatable heroes and dramatic tensions that help you achieve your goals.

It’s the difference between an ignored story and a good story.
It’s the fine line between action and attention.
It’s the purple cow, the angle, the hook.

It’s imperative to understand the difference between worldviews and beliefs of your audience and vice versa.

Platforms that Pay for Storytelling Writing

Business may be dull on the surface, but there are unbelievable dramas underneath that make good stories you can monetize.

In a business’ perspective, the more sophisticated the audience or the product, the more likely the company needs storytelling to generate sales. Freelance writers can take advantage of this scenario.

Below are the types of storytelling writing you can venture.

Native Ads or Advertorial Articles

Native ads and advertorial articles are old-age mediums that feature articles that scream ‘advertising.’

Most of the time, they detail the success of the sponsoring businesses or tell why their products are exceptional in a reported article manner. When these articles appear online, they become native advertising or sponsored posts.

Annual Reports

Annual reports are mostly graphs and charts about the financial state of a company, which you might find boring most of the time. Not so fast here, as annual reports could render compelling stories in the past and can do so in the future.

Public companies need to issue these reports and need to spin them into good stories to retain investors on board. The same thing applies to private and non-profit companies, as they need to produce effective annual reports.

Ghostwriting Placed Articles

If you decide to pull a serious cash out of your freelance writing career, ghostwriting could be the answer. For this medium, you need to flip your point of view and write as if you are a business owner. You need to tell stories in a ‘first person’ basis.

You need to explain how your business grows and develops, what makes it innovative, and what current events your business experiences, just to name a few.

The majority of businesses want to submit these professionally written articles to publications to build brand reputation and enhance their visibility.

Customer Case Studies

If you’re a person who likes to dwell in the nitty-gritty of business details, this niche is perfect for you. Case studies tell the stories of consumers who use the products or services of your clients. These stories will persuade more customers to sign up, provided of course that you tell them everything.

I once wrote a case study for a business-insurance firm. I interviewed a woman who survived a car crash due to a vehicle fire. Her story is the real deal! The survivor then explained how her insurance firm did an excellent job by replacing her car – and the story did have a happy ending. That one made it on the list of a Fortune 500 company, and I got paid $2 per word.

So you see, the more drama you can create with these stories, the better. And your clients will love them more because they generate results.

Takeaway

You don’t need to be virtuoso in storytelling to do well in this sector. You just need to be curious, a good listener and ask a lot of questions.

It’s best that you put your storytelling skills in businesses that demand written projects, as it’s the vibrant ecosystem where you can harness your talent and make real money at the same time.