In the second week of February, I quit my job as a news writer to begin the hunt for my next job. I had high hopes of getting through a well established news agency- but it took me just few days to realize I stepped into a world were only the finest survive.

Being a work from home news writer has its perks and downside. Of course, you won’t be enjoying the benefits of a staff writer but you have the liberty to work at anywhere anytime right? That’s what some people are led to believe.

In the past one year, I have had the opportunity to write on Tech, Gaming and Movie news- adapting from Blog format to AP news style, understand the art of SEO and gain readership to sustain my job. It wasn’t easy. But I loved it!

I mostly wrote on Comic Book Movie news- tasked to write 5 news stories that had potential to gain good readership. I was fortunate as my work timing (EST-IST) didn’t interfere with my sleep cycle and allowed me to work in the early mornings. Although I managed to complete my assignments before the sun hit the top of my head, it wasn’t time to sit back and relax- the next part of work went on till I heard a knock on the door for dinner.

Like every journalist, I spend the whole day reading numerous articles and press releases. Most of them read-ups keep me up-to-date with recent news while the rest are research for original articles.

As a news writer, I don’t just spend my time reformatting posts to avoid plagiarism and rewrite the article. I research to write original, objective articles and listicles.

Sometimes, I find out that a listicle idea I came up with is already written only after a month of researching. That is just how the internet works- no matter how good we are at searching for content we unfortunately don’t stumble upon the article/listicle that we are looking for.

Worst case scenario, the original, objective article I spent nearly a month researching on fails to generate good readership or spark a heated discussion in the comment section.

Times have changed, to be an online news writer- grammar and quality writing isn’t enough to get us through. Every day we learn to be a better writer by understanding what the audience like to read. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The next step requires us to come up with tactics to rank higher in search engines like Google- to get the most number of internet users to come across our article.

My first job expected me to attain 60K readership per month to be regularized and 30K to avoid termination of my services. It sounds scary, but that’s not the case with every news agency. I have a friend that’s currently working for a website that requires writers to maintain 5K traffic per month.

As a news writer, we must have the ability to adapt and be dynamic at our job. One day you’re working for an agency that writes news articles at 300–400 words and the next month for another that writes short crisp news stories at 100–200 words.

Every news website has a goal and program accordingly. It is up to the news writer to understand the requirement and change as expected.

The pay isn’t great but decent- if you’re good at writing articles that garner 5–6 figure traffic, and then you can expect a payment equal to that. But as a starter, it’s going to be hard-hitting to craft an article that’s news worthy and capable of trending.

I spend most of my salary on buying comic books for research and entertainment purpose. Neither do I get press access to great events or advance screening for Marvel and DC movies- I just began my career as a news writer and have a long way to go.

Some may find this excruciating, if you are one them- this life isn’t for you. It’s a long way up the ladder; you’re probably going to spend a lot of time questioning the quality and impact of your writing. But every once in a while you’ll enjoy a sense of relief after publishing an article you worked tirelessly for days, weeks or months.

My first class honors degree probably won’t help me get my next news writing job. But commitment and ability to adapt and be dynamic would be the first step in expecting a call-back or an email from an employee.

Interested in publishing my story on your website? contact me- karstark00@gmail.com