Salary
Average Salary: $52,810
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,204,712
Now for the question you've been waiting for: How much money will you make from this career?
Well, not ten million dollars, that's for sure. Maybe not even ten dollars, to start with. You'll need to prove yourself as a skilled, entertaining writer first.
Let's get the heartbreak out of the way: The starting salary for a newspaper or magazine journalist is $30,000 to $38,000 a year (source). The typical salary for a new advice columnist is almost $53,000 a year, but you're gonna have to do some serious show-and-prove (i.e. building a readership on your own) to get to that level (source).
Respected columnists make more—quite a bit more. A celebrity columnist for The New York Times could make anywhere from $150,000 to $350,000. You know, people like the Doctor Phil's, Doctor Sears, the Dear Abby's, the Oprah's—the folks whose advice we've grown to trust from years and years of visibility.
Other papers, however, pay considerably less. Major syndicated columnists at places like The New York Post or The Daily News only make $70,000 to $100,000. Local newspapers or smaller-city papers make less than half that, if anything at all. Many local papers are moving over to blog format, and pay cuts usually come with such a transition.
This is not easy money by any means. Hate to break it to you, but the chances are you won't see anything like The New York Times money in your lifetime as a columnist.
However, if you have your heart set on trying, who are we to stop you?
Maybe you can make it online.
If you are a hit and have an audience of 10,000 or 20,000 readers a month, you might make a few bucks. Get 100,000 or 200,000 readers and you might actually be getting somewhere. Get 1,000,000 a month and advertisers are lining up to hand you cash.
The harsh reality, however, is the sheer amount of blogs out there. Find and develop a distinct persona that will set you apart from the rest of the advice-givers out there on the web.