Nice reminder from The Content Wrangler on where the money:
Are you looking to drum up some new business? Want to get more dollars from existing clients? Are you a starving writer?
White paper expert Michael A. Stelzner, author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, provides the following reasons white papers could dramatically increase your writing revenue...
Over the past couple years, I've been asked by a few if I would be willing to write a white paper recommending a content management system. information system, or specific product. For the most part, those opportunities always seem to arrive when I'm busy with other projects so I declined. When I wasn't busy, I was asked to write positively about a product I knew nothing about (I declined) as well as a specific information system which I believed could be better written within the company (the potential client had smarter people than me and they agreed).
Either way, receiving $3,000 to $10,000 for a 10-page white paper sounds very good to me. It is very difficult to make that kind of money through advertisement on a blog. Also, it seems to me that if you're consistent enough and focused in a specific information technology field...the paper should almost write itself. Just think what you alone could write about with regards to Total Cost Ownership (TCO) of both propriety and open source content management systems? There are plenty of situations where propriety will win over open source and visa vesa. Oh my, I feel a Jimmy Neutron brain blast coming on...