The Ultimate Guide To Become A Technical Writer in 2021

What is a technical writer?

In plain English, a technical writer is a writer who helps communicate complex information to an audience. Generally, this comes in the form of technical documents that help customers understand how to use a product.

Technical writers often work in industries like tech, engineering and science because those industries require complex information to be communicated to the general public. A technical writer serves as the bridge between technical experts who create a product or service and the general public who use that product or service.

Technical writers must possess the foundational technical understanding of a particular subject along with the writing ability to communicate it easily to a normal, non-technical audience. With the rise of many tech companies, e-learning and more, the demand for technical writers is high and the career outlook for technical writing is excellent.

What does a technical writer do?

The majority of the work that a technical writer does involves preparing technical documents. This includes content like:

  • User manuals
  • How-to guides
  • Technical articles

The actual work a technical writer does will depend on what industry they are working in along with the specific company they work for. For example, a technical writer at a pharmaceutical company will do vastly different work than a technical writer at an enterprise tech company.

Even for technical writers within the same industry, the actual content written will vary. A technical writer at a VR startup company will likely write about the VR headset, different use cases for the product, etc.

Technical writers need to possess both surface-level and specific understanding of their industry. This is what helps them communicate the technical information to a non-technical audience.

The average salary of a technical writer

According to Glassdoor, the average salary of a technical writer is $67,508. This makes technical writing one of the highest paying writing jobs in the economy.

Although, the average salary looks good, there are several factors that will influence how much you will make. These factors include:

Position: A technical writer is not just one position. Different companies have different positions for technical writing. Some positions within technical writing include:

  • Technical writer I, II, III, IV
  • Specifications writer
  • Technical trainer

Each of these positions will different pay grades and structures.

Skills/certifications: Skills and certifications are the single most important factor in determining your salary as a technical writer. Skills and certifications are the best way employers can judge your abilities as a technical writer.

The more skills and certifications you have, the more desired you will be by employers. Technical writers who specializes in a niche often get paid more than general technical writers.

For example, Facebook and Boeing are two of the highest paying employers for technical writers. Each of these companies have vastly different technical writing needs. The more you can specialize in what your desired employer wants, the higher your chances of landing a well-paying role.

Number of years: The number of years you have under your belt as a technical writer will likely correlate with how much you get paid. A technical writer with 5 years of experience will typically out earn an entry level technical writer.

This is simply due to experience. Many companies will find you a much more attractive candidate for a technical writing role if you have experience in the industry for at least several years.

Career paths for a technical writer

There are several paths you can take once you become a technical writer. These paths includes roles in technical writing, management and entrepreneurship.

Staff technical writer: You can choose to be a staff technical writer at a company. This is a general technical writing job where you will spend most of your time writing technical documentation for your employer.

This is typically the role that most new technical writers seek. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates this role will grow by 7% until 2024.

Senior technical writer: After some time as a staff technical writer, you can get promoted to being a senior technical writer. As a senior technical writer, you will continue to do the same responsibilities you had as a staff technical writer along with some new roles.

This includes editing, working alongside technical managers and more. The pay increases significantly when you become a senior technical writer. The average salary for a senior technical writer is about $88,000.

Freelance technical writer

An exciting path you can pursue as a technical writer is to become a freelance technical writer. As a freelance technical writer, you will be fully responsible for your income.

This means you have to find clients, set your rates, collect payment and more. Although this sounds like a big leap from a traditional technical writing role, it can be extremely rewarding.

You will have the opportunity to work remotely, set your own hours and rate. Most freelance technical writers start their freelance work on the side and transition to full-time freelancing after they start making serious money.

You can also start freelance technical writing from scratch, but it’s probably better to do it on the side until you have a good amount of clients.

Can you become a technical writer without experience?

Yes, but it’s not easy. Many employers require some kind of formal education like a Bachelor’s degree, but it’s not a hard requirement.

I’m a freelance content and copywriter. I have 0 formal experience, but I’ve landed dozens of clients in tech, HR, healthcare and more. I’ve actually been asked to do technical writing before by clients.

If you want to break into technical writing without a formal background, you’ll need to have skills and experience as a technical writer.

Here’s how I became a freelance writer and you can do the same with technical writing.

  • I got a basic website and a professional email address (don’t use gmail, it’s unprofessional)
  • I emailed a couple of companies and asked to do writing for them for free or in exchange for a testimonial
  • Once I got 3-5 samples, I started emailing other companies and offered my writing services
  • After a few months, I landed my first client, kept emailing for new clients and the rest is history

As a technical writer, you can follow the same exact path, but make sure you have a solid understanding of technical writing. I’d recommend taking a free technical writing course like this Coursera one I linked here.

Once you do that, you can add it to your resume and start pitching companies for your technical writing services.

Marketing yourself as a technical writer

After 3 years of freelance writing and doing some work in technical writing, I have learned one major lesson: your writing skills does not equal your income.

Your ability to find employers/clients and build your online presence are arguably more important than your actual technical writing ability.

Of course you have to be able to do technical writing or you will not get paid. What I’m saying is once you have a solid foundation of your technical writing abilities, focus the majority of time on marketing.

The real question is what does that actually look like? To put it simply, it means having an online presence to build credibility. This will help provide you with social proof in addition to helping employers find you.

Building your online presence as a beginner

There are several ways you can build you online presence as a technical writer.  The best way to do so is to have an active LinkedIn page and focus on one other medium (ex. blog, Twitter, etc.).

Basically every employer or client will ask you to share samples of work and share your LinkedIn page. Your LinkedIn page allows you to show your education, skills and connections. It’s basically your online public resume.

You don’t need to put it in a ton of time in LinkedIn, just set your page up and connect with a few people each day. In a few months, you’ll have hundreds of connections on LinkedIn.

After setting up your LinkedIn page, focus on one other platform. I highly recommend a blog or Twitter account. Posting occasionally about technical writing topics allows you to position yourself as an expert.

This doesn’t mean you’re the best at technical writing. Just share what you learn about technical writing each week. This goes a long way and will help you stand out from 95% of other technical writers.

If you have a LinkedIn page, blog or Twitter, when someone searches your name on Google it will show that you are a technical writer. This helps tremendously in landing a job or gig.

You don’t have to make it complicated, this should take less than an hour a day. Here’s a sample timeline you can follow to build your online presence in a week:

Day 1: Set up LinkedIn page, connect with 10 technical writers

Day 2: Set up Twitter account, follow 10 technical writers, connect with technical writers on LinkedIn.

Day 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Follow 10 technical writers, connect with 10 technical writers on LinkedIn. Post a tweet a day.

In 7 days, you will have over 50 connections on LinkedIn, 50 followed profiles on Twitter and 5 tweets. This is all done in less than an hour each day. You can spend the rest of your day actually learning about technical writing.

Where can you find technical writing jobs?

Now that you have a solid understand of technical writing and a basic online profile, it’s time to do the real work.

At this point, you have 0 actual technical writing experience. I’d recommend doing free technical writing for 3 clients and then start looking for work. You can find companies looking for technical writers on:

Indeed: Indeed is the biggest job site for technical writers. You can search for technical writing jobs and get thousands of new results each day.

I’d recommend searching for technical writing jobs in your area and remote technical writing jobs. Make sure to filter by date because many of the jobs on Indeed are 30+ days old and they have thousands of applications already.

LinkedIn :

LinkedIn has two ways where you can find technical writing jobs. You can find via:

Search: With search, you can search for recent posts where companies and people are looking to hire technical writers. Search for the terms “hiring technical writer” and filter by date to find the latest posts where people are looking for technical writers.

LinkedIn Jobs: LinkedIn jobs is the job board for LinkedIn. On there you can search for technical writing jobs and see exactly how many people applied and who you need to contact to get a job.

Connections: If you are connected wit a lot of people in technical writing, your feed will show many opportunities for job openings. This can be a passive way for you to get technical writing jobs directly on your LinkedIn feed.

Twitter:

Yes, you can find companies hiring technical writers on Twitter. There’s a strong technical writing community on Twitter and many jobs are posted there every day.

If you go to the search bar in twitter, search for “hiring technical writer”.

You will see dozens of tweets like the one above. You can either message the company directly on Twitter, email them or apply directly on the company website.

There’s not as much competition on Twitter in comparison to sites like Indeed, so it’s a good place to start.

Final thoughts

This is an overview of how you can start a career in technical writing. I’d recommend using all of the free resources possible available to you like free courses, Google and YouTube. This will help set your foundation and you can pursue real work.

As a freelance writer myself, there’s only one way to actually get good at writing: doing it for real clients.

Once you have your basics down, throw together a site and start pitching clients on your technical writing services. If you keep doing this, you’ll build a client base and you can become a full time technical writer in a year or two.

I’ve linked a list of free technical writing courses here that you can check out.

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