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It's many people's dream to be a published author. While dreaming of seeing your name in the Bestseller List is one thing, there are many other ways to make a career through writing. This could be through writing bestselling books if you’re exceptionally talented or lucky, but most career writers are normally working for a magazine or online publication, or marketing as a copywriter. If you've got a creative side and would like to know more about writing full time for a living, then take a read of this article for some further insight.

Journalism

The most traditional of the writing careers, journalism ext ends from the top national newspapers, through printed magazines, e-zines, regional papers and, more recently, professional blogging. With such a wide variety of scope, there are ample opportunities to get into journalism. It’s often very competitive, especially when trying to get a job at one of the most widely circulated print publications or newspapers. Despite this, many smaller publications are prepared to take on more inexperienced candidates, and often graduates at reporter or junior level. It's often a prerequisite to be NCTJ Qualified for newspaper journalism, or otherwise complete this course as part of a journalism job. However, if you have specialist knowledge which could be used at a particular publication – for instance a computer games magazine – then it may not be necessary.

Marketing and Creative

Almost all marketing communication requires writers to ensure copy is well crafted and conveys the brand marketing message correctly. While it will often be the decision of a manager to approve a particular piece of copy, it is up to the copywriter to be the initial burst of creativity and get the copy written. Copywriters often work in creative teams alongside an Art Director. The copywriter writes the copy, while the Art Director will normally take care of layout, concepts or photography and it’s very important that they get on well and have a sound professional understanding. Opportunities in copywriting for a marketing agency can be very diverse, with the potential to work on print, television, radio and online media. Different agencies have different specialties, so make sure you understand and enjoy their particular specialized medium before sending them a C.V. If you’re on the lookout for creative opportunities and marketing jobs, including copywriting work, then the Guardian Jobs website or the listings in the same paper’s weekly Media supplement are both good places to start your search

Online

While aspects of journalism and creative now creep into online marketing, there are many writers who spend all of their time working on websites. That is - they write the marketing copy on websites and make sure it is kept up to date. Writing for websites normally requires a certain level of technical understanding to ensure publication is smooth and does not constantly require developers to upload content. This is normally done through a content management system ( CMS ), while writers will often be expected to have some knowledge of Hyper T ext Mark Up Language (HTML) which is the standard formatting language for web documents. Furthermore, now that ranking on search engines such as Google is a major traffic driver, it is often regarded as important for a writer or editor to have a sound knowledge of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).