If you’re like most freelance writers with a dream, you do one kind of writing “by day” — the kind you get paid for — and another “by night” — the kind you love and dream of doing full-time.

If that’s you, you’re doing twice the work you need to, and you may be hurting your chances of advancing toward that dream career.

Be more choosy to make your dream career a reality.

When you’re starting out, many steady blogging jobs ask you to “be able to write with authority on a variety of topics”. You become trained to believe that in order to make money blogging, you have to know how to write about whatever a client wants you to write about. You become very skilled at internet research.

But what about the reason you write in the first place?

What about those topics you love with such passion that you pour hours every week into unpaid posts for your own blog? What of the things you choose to read about in your spare time, that you talk about in days-long Twitter conversations with people halfway round the world?

You don’t have to be a jack-of-all-trades blogger to make money. You can be choosy and stick to the topics you love. Here’s how.