The thing that surprises me about a lot of this — creating blogs, putting together packages that people pay money for, finding value — is that so much of it doesn't seem to actually require any particular skill. Sure, I have valuable experience with WordPress, CSS, HTML, and Adobe Creative Suite, and I'm great at drawing, but you don't really need any of this stuff to make money. I just want to do it with style. It doesn't necessarily mean, however, that I'll be more successful at it, or make more money.

It's still a risk to start a second career. It's a lot of time spent working for something that I don't know is going to pay off, but I have a hard time believing the things that I'm learning won't have marketable skills. I just need to be able to learn how to make it marketable for people in case I need to look for a job down the line.

For instance, here's a Reddit post by someone who is in this blogging game and outsources their writing entirely:

Be weary of working with a friend, it can impact your friendship in the future.

I pay around 0.05-0.08/word for good quality articles fully researched. I have paid as low as 0.02 in the past but found that the quality below 0.05 was generally quite poor.

On-page SEO optimisation isn't difficult. Just install a plugin like Yoast and it will tell you more or less how to do it.

After I found 3 writers to work with, I promoted and trained the most capable to oversee the production of it. She now researches keywords, proofreads the incoming text, and formats it for publication. She is paid by the hour unlike the writers. This means that the content production (at least the written part) is completely outsourced.

Reddit

What does this even look like? (Apart from making my eye twitch with the improper use of weary vs wary?)

It all seems slightly unbelievable. After all, aren't people visiting your site for its content? Isn't content literally what writing is? Well, yes ... but it's not the only content, is it?

There's photography and video and art, too ... as well as (literally) information. The mode of conveyance, as it were. Photography, video, art, and writing give you the information, with all their inherent limitations. For instance, if you were trying to explain the concept of quantum physics, would you use a photograph to do it?

As the daughter of a journalist, I'm a little scandalized by all of this wanton disregard for the artistry of writing. What do you mean, you just give people information? What about adjectives, hmm? What about analogies?

Apparently none of it matters if you're just trying to find the recipe for the best lasagna. What you need, according to what I've been reading, is SEO keywords, some money to pay outsourced freelance writers, backlinks, and a really good niche.