Listen to your songs with a critical ear to see if you can improve on the structure and the arrangement and make them more effective pieces of music. Study successful songs in your chosen genre and pay attention to how they're constructed. There is no magic formula for a successful song, but if you listen to plenty of hit songs, you'll likely notice similarities in song structure that you can learn from and use to your advantage.
Join a performing rights organization so that you can be paid for any future royalties earned by your compositions. In the U.S., you have a choice of signing with BMI, ASCAP or SESAC to administer these payments for you. These organizations also offer discounts on a variety of music products and services and offer industry showcase opportunities for up-and-coming songwriters.
Record a quality demo of three of your best songs and make the catchiest one the opening track. Anyone not won over by this point is unlikely to continue to listen. When choosing the songs, try not to be so concerned with which song means the most to you personally, but go with those that you think have the most commercial appeal.
Contact local advertising agencies and ask if you can write jingles for their clients. Jingle writing may not be the most glamorous songwriting gig out there, but it can be lucrative once you find clients that trust you and your work. This can be particularly profitable if you have a quality home recording studio at your disposal since you can write, perform and edit the jingles all from the comfort of your own home without having to pay hefty recording studio fees.
Enter songwriting contests. These contests vary in scale, from local and regional competitions in a particular genre, to international contests that are open to writers from all over the globe and accept songs in a wide variety of categories. Naturally, the smaller contests offer smaller prizes while the larger ones often feature celebrity guest judges, and offer thousands of dollars in cash and prizes (see "Resources").
Sign up with a song pitching service that will pitch songs on your behalf to artists looking for material or to companies wishing to license music for movies, TV shows or video games. There are many online companies that do this, and they'll either charge an upfront fee or ongoing membership fee for their services, or they'll waive that in exchange for a percentage (usually around 50 percent) of future earnings from songs they successfully place for you.