No matter where you are in the world. No matter what you are doing as far as your career is concerned, you can become a freelance writer. It is an excellent job for earning extra money or maintaining a full-time job from writing. People join freelance writing due to passion or when they are just bored with their nine to five jobs.
First step for Freelance Writer:
Firstly, when it comes down to writing, you don’t need a professional course or degree to be good. Every individual has a different take on how they express themselves, and the content they deliver reflects it. There are a few significant points you need to consider if you want to earn well as a freelance writer. These steps are typical for any writer who is thinking of getting into freelancing.
Research
Read blogs of freelance writers, their experiences, and work methods. You should research about freelance writing in general. Most of the time new freelancers don’t even know anything about how to write a blog post or an affiliate article. Get information on what kind of work you can get as a writer.
Guest posting
One way to start earning as a freelance writer is by guest posting. Famous blog sites use guest posts, and sometimes they pay you for the post as well. All you need to do is find your favorite website, get familiar with their posting style, their formatting technique and write a pitch. You may get the post, and if you do, you’ll have your post up on their site with information about you and your work. This way you’ll get some good money and a lot of promotion.
Too much work
Some clients will offer you a writing job to deliver a considerable amount of content for very less money. The basic strategy of these sites is to get a significant amount of text content at low prices. Try to avoid such offers. These will only waste your time and efforts.
Pitching to clients
Pitching is one of the most important steps when it comes to freelancing. It is not only for writers but other freelancers as well. Pitching is nothing but interacting with the client to get a gig. It is critical to note that these clients go through a large number of emails on a daily basis, so make sure your pitch stands out. It is okay if your pitch isn’t “the ideal pitch” in the beginning, but you should keep learning how to improve your pitch. If you get your pitch right, your inbox will be filled with job offers soon enough.
While pitching, you must take care that:
- Don’t write a wall of text
- Add samples of your work
- Be confident
- Avoid grammatical errors
Create a portfolio
Grab your best works and shove them in a pile. This is precisely what you don’t want to do. There is no specific type of content that you need to keep in your portfolio. It can be a newspaper article, a blog post that you are proud of or anything else in general. Keep your portfolio presentable and professional. Keep hard copies and soft copies available with you at all times. You never know when you get a call from a potential client. Post articles on LinkedIn, it helps a lot.
Confidence is the key to success
Writing is like an art, not every person out there would like your way of expression. Many clients would reject your work, you might get turned down a couple of times, but you must not lose hope. It is not easy to start freelancing. So Keep calm and be confident.
Juggling the balls
As you are the manager, the financial administrator of your business. Make sure you manage all your work, the bills, the payments. Maintain files and excel sheets to go through with the management of all the projects.
Keep learning
It is essential to keep getting better at what you do. If a particular experience with a client isn’t great, you will learn how to get better. Try getting better at your writing skills by practicing and working hard.
Blogs to the rescue?
Start your blog apart from looking for jobs and working for companies. Blogging helps in promotion of your writing skills and might end up getting you a few writing gigs as well. Furthermore, maintain your blog because many people with good blogs get hired even if they were not initially trying to look for writing gigs. Social media is a vast platform. Use it to your best abilities.
