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Content writing is a great option to pursue as a career. You get to explore your creative side, plus the abundance of opportunities lets you choose a job suitable to your lifestyle. A content writer can be a freelancer or a full-time employee, can either choose to work from the office, or work from home. I can barely remember of another job profile that offers you so much of flexibility. That said, there has been an influx of individuals jumping into the bandwagon in recent years. But the sad reality is, only a handful of them are able to make a sustainable career. Despite having a heavy demand of content writers in the industry, most of the wannabe writers are never able to make it big. Reason? They do not possess all the qualities of a good content writer. The profession of content writing is not just about writing. It’s way beyond that. If you are looking to learn content writing and make a career as a content writer, ask yourself these five questions first. Can you write error-free English? Pretty basic, huh! If you cannot write error-free, grammatically correct English (or the language of your preference), you would never be able to keep your readers engaged. Would you take my posts seriously if they are full of grammatical errors? No. Right? When a user reads a piece of content, he/she assumes the creator of the article to be a subject matter expert. Errors in writing break that assumption, which hits the engagement. Do you understand the meaning and consequences of plagiarism? Does the word ‘plagiarism’ sound foreign to you? If the answer is yes, then stop right away and do some research over it. Because this is something that you will need to take care of during the lifetime of your writing career. In short, plagiarism refers to copied content. Understand that copying even one sentence without giving due credit to the original author qualifies for plagiarism, and trust me, it’s a crime in the world of content writing. Can you research about a topic you have never heard of and write like an expert on it? Whether you plan to write for yourself (your own blog, website etc.) or clients, you would often be needed to write on the topics that you might have never heard of. Especially, if your client base consists of digital marketing firms or SEO agencies, get ready to handle a new subject every day. Can you handle such a situation? Can you beat procrastination? Procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing your work because you don’t feel like doing it right now. Procrastination is the worst enemy of a content writer, and trust me, every writer faces it sooner or later. More than 60% of the content writers do not submit the job they pick from the clients. And due to this, they are never able to retain long-term clients. So ask yourself, would you be able to beat it when you face it? Can you keep yourself consistent? Do you know why successful content writers do not need to keep asking for a job every now and then? Because they have the ability to retain every client with consistency in their quality and punctuality. For e.g. My first client, who paid me a dollar for a blog post eight years back, is still my client. Currently, I bill that company around $ 3k per month. That’s the power of consistency. Can you offer consistency in terms of quality and timely delivery of content to your clients? If not, you would never be able to create a scalable business out of it. If your answer is no for any of the above questions, no need to get disheartened. All the skills I mentioned above can be developed if you are determined and clear about your goals. In the upcoming lessons, we will learn about how to overcome your shortcomings and explore the successful content writer hidden in you. Also, I would love to know if your answer is no for any of the above questions. Do you find it hard to write error-free English? Have you ever taken a job and could not deliver it on time because you felt like not doing it after taking the job? (You are not alone, two-third of all the writers you know have done this) Be honest with yourself and open up about your experiences here. Note that, in the upcoming lessons, I would only be discussing the issues that you would be highlighting today.