Write for local businesses

It uses a skill you can show on a page, the buyer is a real business, and you do not need a guru’s niche.

The first yes is usually a business you already use — a café, a clinic, a club. Strangers on the internet pay less and edit more. Two paid pages are a portfolio.

The business pays your invoice by bank transfer, due on a date you write down. A deposit for a larger job is reasonable. A client who cannot pay a deposit but wants the whole site by Friday is telling you something.

1. Rewrite one weak local page as a sample, with the business’s name removed or their permission.
2. Offer a fixed outcome: “your services page, two rounds of edits, delivered in a week”.
3. Visit or email five businesses whose sites are visibly out of date.
4. Invoice when you send the draft, due when they approve, and say that in the first email.

• A business you already pay. You have standing to be specific.
• A community organisation that has a committee and a budget, even a small one.
• A tradesperson who is good at the work and tired of their own website.

Charge for the page, not the hour, until you know how long you take. Put the number of edits in the price. “£150 for the menu and the about page” is a sentence an owner can answer.

Keep a note of every payment and every cost from the first job. In the UK this is usually self-employment; tell HMRC when your income reaches the point they set. In the US it is often self-employment tax, sometimes with quarterly estimates. Other countries have their own registration. This is not tax advice — an hour with an accountant beats any course.

• Content mills that pay a few dollars for 1,000 words are a job, and a bad one. They are not on this list.
• Do not ghostwrite essays for students. That is helping someone cheat.
• Clients who want you to post fake reviews are asking you to break the law.