I have been writing content for almost 10 years now. Since then, I have dealt with different clients who have their ideas of what “quality” content is.

Some businesses want to know if the content I create will help them achieve their goals. Others have very specific ideas of what makes a good piece of content.

Despite the dread, you strive to live every single day. You take the first step to find your writing voice and the distinctive writing style that speaks to you.

Best Strategic Plan for Writers to Earn At Least $1K/Mo

Table of Contents

• • The highlight of this post:
• Best Strategic Plan for Writers to Earn At Least $1K/Mo
  • Making a Strategic Plan for Writers
  • Don’t start planning your strategic plan without this.
  • Intro
  • Strategic Plan for Writers: Features & Benefits
  • Learn how you start the plan that brings great returns.
  • Strategic Plan for Writers: Starter Questions
    • Love yourself, your values, feelings, and beliefs
  • Strategic Plan for Writers: Primary Goal
    • how to find your True Writing aspirations
  • Key Component of the Strategic Plan for Writers
    • Learn how to own your feelings without judgment.
  • Make Strategic Plan for Writers in 2022
    • A Step-by-Step DIY Content Strategy Tutorial
    • Step 1: Describe your winning writing business.
    • Step 2: Imagine your writing career 30 years from now.
    • Step 3: Explain your company’s biggest contributions.
    • Step 4: Know your relevance.
    • Step 5: Define your BHAGs objectives.
    • Step 6: List your potential wins through SMART goal setting.
  • My Final Thoughts

Making a Strategic Plan for Writers

Don’t start planning your strategic plan without this.

Intro

Before we start, allow me to briefly talk about how I came up with this topic and wrote about it today.

A few weeks ago, I found “Making a Strategic Plan,” by Olalah Njenga. She’s the CEO of YellowWood Group who’s behind this Small Business Bootcamp.

Going through her activities was a mind-blowing and eye-opener experience for me. It inspired me to share my take on this simple, effective, and valuable strategy. Enjoy!

Strategic Plan for Writers: Features & Benefits

Learn how you start the plan that brings great returns.

You did great in your content. Your users seem to like what you do because they tend to stay longer on your website. As a reward, you will receive any of the following from the Bots.

1. Increased Income (of at least $1,000/month income from writing English content online)
2. Increased Author Ranking (That’s you!)
3. Increased Domain Authority (DA) rewarded for your website (Min. DA Score: 50)
4. Increased Organic Traffic (FREE TRAFFIC, not from paid social media ads, etc.)
5. Expanded Network of Writers or Clientele
6. And more!

Today is the best time for you to let go of trying to control every inch of your life. You’ve got to learn how to know how these strategies and techniques work. So, you can guarantee to receive the best results to pay off your hard work.

Strategic Plan for Writers: Starter Questions

Love yourself, your values, feelings, and beliefs

Your constant desire to know what’s to come could blind you from seeing what means more to you. Choose your steps with a conscious and an aim mind.

You have to start by listening to how your body feels starting from this moment until the end of this post. Try to stay aware and present throughout the end.

Guide Questions

Take a look at this self-introspective exercise. Answer them as much as you can on your journal, planner, diary, or copy paper.

• Does your body feel open, freeing, or light?
• Or, does it feel the other way around?
• Do you feel tense, uneasy, discomfort, or rather empty?

Add more questions as many as your heart desires. At least while you’re here on my web page, permit yourself to know how you are. I mean, how well you are, right now. Now that you’re set, let’s begin.

Strategic Plan for Writers: Primary Goal

how to find your True Writing aspirations

Earlier, I mentioned you let go of the urge to ask “how” while you try to develop your most authentic strategic plan. Instead of focusing on trying to know what’s to come, you rather choose to know the “what,” “why,” and “when.”

Examples:

Here’s what I wrote for myself:

• What – What do I want to achieve/become as a writer?
• Why – Why did I choose to become a professional writer?
• When – When did I first realize that I have to get serious with it?

There is no wrong or right answer here. This is not the time to entertain the inconveniences of your inner criticism. Rather, this is the best time for you to listen to yourself more.

I know that it’s going to be tough for you. But, you must learn how to build and set boundaries for yourself and others. So, try answering these questions. Give yourself the chance to assert your opinions, beliefs, and most importantly, your dreams.

If you need to shut the doors, go. Do it.

If you want to stop caring about what others say or think of you, do it.

If you want to chase your useless priceless dream, do it.

If you want to believe this is selfishness, it’s not selfish to act upon it.

Whatever the questions are, you don’t have any entitlement without judging them. If you may ask why it is because your aspirations are neither big nor small as the others.

Key Component of the Strategic Plan for Writers

Learn how to own your feelings without judgment.

If you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable right now, feel it, and allow the arousal of pain to soak into your veins. Let those tears fall and cry until your eyes have gone dry. Meantime, you try to gather enough courage to face your fears and fight.

Yes, I understand how it feels to confront the same fears you’ve been avoiding all this time. Although it’s going to be a hard process, don’t try to suppress these emotions.

Let them flow within you to remind you that you are your person. At the same time, try to look at yourself in a reflection without disgust or any influence. Talk to the person you see while being gentle and patient with yourself.

Right now, open your eyes and try to look at yourself from an aim point of view. At this moment, look at yourself. See your true value as a writer through a pair of your keen eyes. Then, tell us here in our community about this experience. Let me know what you think.

Make Strategic Plan for Writers in 2022

A Step-by-Step DIY Content Strategy Tutorial

This exercise has six steps for you to follow, so you will have a wholesome and reflective strategic planning experience.

• Step 1: Describe your winning writing business. (OUTLOOK)
• Step 2: Imagine your writing career 30 years from now. (VISION)
• Step 3: Explain Your Company’s Biggest Contributions. (MISSION)
• Step 4: Know your relevance. (LANDSCAPE)
• Step 5: Define your BHAGs objectives. (OBJECTIVES)
• Step 6: List your potential wins through SMART goal setting. (GOALS)

Step 1: Describe your winning writing business.

Without thinking of what others think or say about your dreams, open your eyes, and look at yourself from a third-person point of view.

Figuring out the outlook for your writing business must discourage you from limiting beliefs as a habit. By the way, inhibitions could mean a lot of things. These photos below the table are inhibitions.

As a result, what would come first is that may stop you from achieving for yourself. “When you think about the Outlook for your company, let your sense of optimism take over,” Olala Njenga suggested.

Examples:

She provided winning examples as a guide for you to construct yours.

• Added a new product or service to increase revenue by 25%
• Got hired for my freelance content writing services for a starting price of $1,000

Guide Questions:

Look at what’s happening across the freelance writing platforms.

• What trends do you notice?
• What shifts are happening?
• How can you make this work for your business?

Practice Exercises:

Learn how to test yourself and as you do when you do it with others. Review the examples above in case you’re confused.

What does the outlook for your writing business look like?

Feel free to leave it in the comment section below, and get feedback. Let’s do it!

Step 2: Imagine your writing career 30 years from now.

Looking back at yourself reminds me of when you fell in love with writing for the first time.

Based on Njenga’s recommendation, a company’s vision could reach as far as 10, 20, or 30 years from now. However, you need to think of it through storytelling.

This strategy is not limited to fiction writing anymore. The fact is, more and more businesses have already started to integrate this writing technique into their blogs.

The reason is simple.

Sales and profits will only come after you have established a lasting impression with your target market. Your content must be able to bridge the brand you’re promoting and the audience. Otherwise, your Call-to-Action (CTA) efforts and the business won’t take off at all.

Though storytelling isn’t selective to niches or forms, as a content writer, you are responsible for the website content. That means you work on tasks involved in content writing, such as:

• Choosing the right material
• Organizing the content ideas
• Designing relevant media content

Regardless of the niche or type of content, your storytelling skills have more weight in writing any piece of content from all niches. You are writing an effective piece of content if you know how to draw people’s attention and skillfully entertain them.

Examples:

If you could come up with a 15-second reel that will show your life and everything about you, how it will look? Is this what you want to achieve for yourself with pride?

If so, you must always focus on improving the engagement rate. Otherwise, you will have problems with the stakeholders involved, depending on your location.

Guide Questions:

Let’s warm up those creative muscles to produce your best work.

Go ahead and answer these questions to help you have a better picture of your future success as a writer and entrepreneur at the same time.

• What truly motivates you to write?
• Why did you choose to become a content writer?
• If could come up with a 15-second reel that will show your life and everything about you, how it will look?
• Does writing make you feel fulfilled and successful? Or, does it make you feel low, sad, empty, and melancholic?

If you’re like most writers, you would say that writing isn’t a hobby. Writing has been the only way for me to express my voice as I can, uninterrupted.

How about you? Let me know in the comment section!

Practice Exercises:

Imagine showing your life in 15 seconds. Describe what you see in bullet points to represent the sequence of events. Or, sketch a storyboard of that 15-second reel that will represent who you are.

Step 3: Explain your company’s biggest contributions.

The only reason that matters is the reason that matters to your customers.

Olalah Njenga

The third step of the Small Business Boot Camp involves you explaining the “why.” If you want to start making money from writing, Njenga provided a few examples for you, as you can see below:

Examples:

• Google – To organize the world’s information
• Nordstrom – To give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible
• Tesla – To speed up the world’s transition to sustainable energy

With all these examples in mind, show your mission statement with us here in the community. Then, have an open mind with whatsoever others would say about your work.

Guide Questions:

• Why does your company exist?
• What are the problems your business can solve?
• Does this still ring true to me?

Your mission statement should explain “why the company exists and the problems to solve.”Making a strategic plan demands collaborative work. You need to know who your clients are, where they are from, topics they talking about, etc.

Practice Exercises:

• Write the vision statement of your writing business.

Step 4: Know your relevance.

Being and staying relevant mean understanding what’s happening in the business environment…

According to Njenga, developing the best landscape means figuring out the business environment. This may depend on the purpose or intent of the content. You have to investigate the trends worldwide, favorite writers, authors, or bloggers.

That said, I compiled a list of free SEO tools for you to try. You don’t have to use everything. Choose a few tools that work for you.

Examples:

• Conduct surveys and polls on my email list weekly
• Enroll in Udemy’s top content writing courses
• Attend webinars to expand writing skillset

Remember that you aren’t just a content writer here. You are now leaving that chapter and entering a new one as an entrepreneur. To put, you’re leveling up from a low-entry writer to becoming a business owner.

Required Number of Page Views

If a website reaches at least 50,000 page views, it’s already a good indicator. If it isn’t, there could be something wrong in any part of the stages.

Besides what I mentioned earlier, you also must make sure the users stay at least a minute or two on your page. In their eyes, this is a good indicator that your website is quality.

For instance, Google Bots found your website. What it does is crawl to every tidbit piece of information you have on your website. Then, they will crawl with your users forcing the general public to do something and stay around three minutes. Got me?

Practice Exercises:

With that, Njenga recommends the following activities for you to try today. So, you can start figuring out the know-how in your chosen writing industry. Try the following activities I listed below.

• Action 1: Write out your company’s competition
• Action 2: Write out your company’s competitive threats
• Action 3: Writer out what your business will do to stay competitive
• Action 4: Sign up for free accounts on recommended SEO platforms
• Action 5: Create a list of websites you admired with explanations why you do.

If you HAVE a website:

If you own a website, sign up for a free account on the following platforms (list below).

• Semrush
• Ahrefs
• Google Analytics (GA)
• Google Search Console (GSC)
• Recommended AI Content Generators

If you DON’T HAVE a website:

So, if you don’t own any website (yet), list down the websites you admired and the characteristics you want to emulate.

Step 5: Define your BHAGs objectives.

Objectives are outcome-driven achievements that move the needle in a big way for your business.

BHAG objectives mean Big, Hairy, and Audacious Goals. In the fifth step, Njenga wishes that you may have the courage to dream big. It entails outcome-driven achievements, depending on how well you execute them.

Examples:

• Health and Beauty – Get the product line on the shelves of a major big-box retailer.
• Marketing – Become the agency of record for the top-10 largest firms in the area.
• Real Estate – Awarded agent of the year with the highest sales volume in the office.

Guide Questions:

To make it easier for you, here are some of the questions you could ask yourself as per Njenga’s analysis.

• What are a few things you get excited about accomplishing?
• What big outcomes will set your company up for long-term success?

Practice Exercises:

• Own those objectives and turn them into habits before it’s too late. Write a list of potential outcomes you want your writing business to achieve this year.

Step 6: List your potential wins through SMART goal setting.

The milestones the business will achieve or show progress toward the objectives.

Your goals will be the last thing you need to include in your Strategic Plan for Writers. According to Njenga, writers must consider them as milestones of their writing business.

But here’s the catch. Not all milestones are goals. Yet, your goals are milestones. These milestones must follow the standard SMART goal setting.

Milestones, Actions, & SMART Goals

For those who are unfamiliar with it, here’s a quick recap. SMART stands for, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Otherwise, that milestone is not a goal but only an action. Goals are your business milestones. But not all milestones are goals. Why?

A milestone can only become a goal if they have clear actionable steps to move forward. Your goals don’t have to be perfect, as long as they match your mission, vision, and as well as your website core message.

Examples:

• Follow up with at least five clients every week for testimonials.
• Secure three high-paying clients by the end of the month.
• Send weekly newsletters to promote new stories and my upcoming eBook

Guide Questions:

• What are the SMART indicators that are most important in achieving your objectives?
• How will you know the plan is working?
• Are any of your goals actions in disguise?

Practice Exercises:

• Create a weekly planner to feature the milestones for your writing business. Then, watch your progress.
• Arrange your milestones in a separate monthly planner or yearly planner. Check out my latest handmade books, notebooks, journals, planners, books, and many more!
• If you prefer a paperless planning, you can take advantage of Milanote to help visualize your brainstorming ideas. You can sign up for a Milanote Free Plan. Unless you use all 100 cards on your account, it’s free forever.

My Final Thoughts

Now, it’s your turn to start. If you like to become a successful writer this year, if not, trying to make writing a lucrative source of income, you’ve got to have a plan.

Use my Strategic Plan for Writers Template in this post. Just follow the format I used to write this post today. If you think you’ve missed something, perhaps confused, let me know as well.

You may use the contact form below this post to write your message. Thank you for spending time with me. See you again soon.