If you look at the official business of freelance writing, it's a wonder why anyone would participate, much less pursue it as any kind of serious career. Magazines are going belly-up, job offers are scarce, the pay stinks (if you even get paid), and editors with red pens ruin your stuff but leave your name attached.



All that is true, but it may also be the best time in history to be a writer. Way back in the 15th century, a German inventor named Johannes Gutenberg invented a new type of printing press. He was not the inventor of the printing press, per se; people had known how to put ink on paper mechanically for some time. Until Johannes Gutenberg's invention, printing was done from fixed solid plates that could not be changed.

Gutenberg invented movable type. He invented a sort of rack or holder for letters, which could be inserted into the tracks. From this, we get the term "type-setting" because those metal letters were literally set into the rack. The real revolution that Gutenberg caused was this: printed materials got much, much cheaper. Books no longer belonged just to royalty or the very wealthy. Movable type made cheap books (and their companion, advertising) possible.

The business model that evolved from Gutenberg's invention existed up until very recently. One guy owns the printing press and the printing company; writers were just the people paid to provide verbiage. The guy who owned the printing press or the publishing house bore the burden of keeping the business financially solvent. It was up to him to pay the bills, print the publication, distribute it and sell it.

Those few stalwart publishing entrepreneurs who thrived did so by figuring out what would sell. Writers who wanted to write for money had to find publishers who could make enough money selling their words to pay them.

Well, another revolution just happened and I'm afraid some writers may have missed it. With the Internet, the whole publisher-writer paradigm collapsed. One writer with a computer and some basic Internet skills and a knack for writing can now publish content without an editor. In other words, overnight, writers became publishers. Publishers became writers. The old-fashioned model of publishers who sought out writers to furnish "mere words" disappeared.

Writers own the presses now.

The result is that a prolific and talented writer can now self-publish just about anything he or she wants. Like horses? Want to write about poker? How about gardening along the Gulfcoast? Writers can now get any "assignment" they want and publish their work not just to one local periodical or a niche national market but to the entire world. Any writer with a website has the same "reach," that is, the ability to get to an audience, that any other site has.

One lone writer in a small town in the middle of nowhere now has, potentially at least, the reach of CNN. The reach of Google.

Of course, this doesn't mean writers will instantly get rich. Writers are now tasked with being publishers and that means understanding business. But the writer who can learn this new terrain-the Internet-and figure out how to turn content into money has opportunities no other writers in history have ever had.

You can see it everywhere. On those websites like e-lance that seek freelance writers, you'll find the number one job offer is to provide content either for a website or some electronic materials like an e-book. The writer who understands this can start producing content for his or her own sites and electronic materials.

Go to http://www.workingonlinewriter.com to get a glimpse of how this new shift works. Writers should be inspired and motivated by this. However, it usually turns out to be overwhelming rather than invigorating.

There's so much to learn.

Writers need to learn how to write for the web and they need to become experts in their subject areas. Whether it's birdwatching or day trading, you need to know your stuff. Writers have always needed to know what they were doing. That part has not changed so much as the need for talent and expertise has simply gotten more pronounced.

But writers also need to learn how to use the Internet and not just as a researcher or passive visitor. The Internet offers numerous business models, some of which are still emerging. There are lots of resources that can help guide the newbie into the world of Internet commerce, and it takes a lot of reading to keep up.

The good news is this: even if you're just getting started today, you're not arriving late to the party. Want to know who an Internet veteran is? That's the guy who started two years ago. Nobody has a big jump on you, not even the old-timers.

Writers need to hone some web skills. I can remember a time when I first started working in an office when some men adamantly refused to learn how to use a computer because business men didn't use computers. That was for secretaries. They were wrong.

Later on, as I got into writing for a living, I met a lot of writers who didn't know much about design and who staunchly refused to have any dealings with the production side of words-on-paper. That was for graphic artists.

We're finding out that that is not true, either. Today, you need to learn how to write and manage basic websites. You can always buy expert talent if you need a logo design or special help with a database, but writers are smart enough to learn the basics.

Writers must re-think the whole business of writing. No longer can a writer afford to be egocentric ("I want to write about saltwater fishing") but must temper that with a dash of economic pragmatism ("How can I make money providing information about saltwater fishing? And who exactly would be willing to pay for that kind of material? How can I find those people?").

Last but not least, writers need to get out there and play. Start a website. Write some content for somebody else's website. Buy a course or two and read. Visit other people's sites (the ones that are making money) and see what they know that you don't know. Launch a blog, build another site, and go back and study some more.

This is a great time to be a writer.