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COMPLETE GUIDE ON HOW TO START FREELANCE WRITING TODAY
Even if you have Tried and failed before
My name is Echez, and I am a senior content writer, an entrepreneur, and a digital marketer. I will be handing to you everything you need to know about how to start freelance writing today.
If you have been trying to earn a living online, freelance writing is the way to go and, in this article, I am going to hand over to you a complete guide on how to start freelance writing today.
It does not matter if you have tried and failed before, because I also did fail initially but then it all came together when I learned how to put the various components of freelance writing together. You can check out a list of 8 tips to help you succeed in freelancing today.
My name is Echez and I am going to lead you by the hand to explore your chances of becoming a freelance writer today.
what exactly is freelance writing?
As an online Freelance writer, you are more like a writing contractor.
That is, you take writing jobs from clients and you deliver the completed job, get paid, and move to the next client.
In the above scenario, you simply write for money. You are not necessarily employed or tied to a single organization or person even though you might have one or a few recurring clients.
As a freelance writer, you have the option to write on a variety of topics or stick with one.
Although in a broader sense, you may not be the one writing, sometimes, all you do is go source for the client and when you get a job, you turn around and look for a writer who does the job.
Once done, you deliver to your client and get paid, whatever the margin is yours.
This article will cover the following:
- How to write as a freelancer
- Getting freelance jobs
- Be acquainted with Upwork.
- Know and use Linkedin
Now that you have a basic idea of what freelancing is, let us talk about the things you need to start this business.
You are excited, are you not? But before you start, let us be sure you have everything you need before I guide you on how to start freelance writing.
How to write as a freelancer
In writing as a way to make money, there is no one bullet that kills it all. So I am going to disappoint you a bit by not telling you one single thing you can do to make yourself a freelance writer.
But by the end of this article, you should have everything you need to land your first job.
Take your time to read through, it is a rather long article but, make sure you check out all the important steps and take action as needed.
The pre-requisite to freelance writing
If you are reading this now, you already have almost half of what you need to start writing as a freelancer. Here is what am talking about:
Your tools:
- You need an internet connection to do freelancing.
- You need a working internet-enabled laptop. (of course, you can do it with a mobile device but if you want to go far, you need a computer)
- Also among your tools should be a working email address. (the likes of Gmail will do but it will be more professional in the long run if you go for a dedicated email address) this positions you as someone into something serious. I prefer having a dedicated email to my writing business, that way it keeps things clean and tidy.
- You will also need a customer base to break free with freelance writing. The best way to go is to start building your email list as soon as possible. Use Mailchimp as they allow you to do a lot on their free plan. To maximize the result, give out something valuable for free and you will be in a position to build your list in no time.
- It is not a requirement to start a blog before you start freelancing, but if you are serious about doing it as a business, then you should by all means get yourself a blog or website.
It is not as complicated as they may have made you believe, in fact, you can check this article on How To Start A Blog and Make Money, Even If You Have No Experience.
More tools to fast-track your freelance writing
The above are some of the important tools you will need, but a few more tips below will make life easier for you:
- Develop a businesslike, polite, and reliable reputation.
- You will need a freelance platform, a good place to start is PeoplePerHour
- Social media account and possibly a business page
- Time
- Writing skills
- I would also strongly recommend you invest in a blog of some sort. There are a lot of cheap domains and hostings for beginners. Doing this will give you a space to showcase your business to your prospective clients.
- Sign up with Linkedin, and be active on it. If used well, you could land your first job on LinkedIn. Utilize the article writing feature in Linkedin, and show what you are capable of doing. A lot of potential clients will see what you have, and if you follow it up with the right pitch, you could be golden.
You Are One Step Closer To Starting Your Freelance Carear
If you have all the above in place, you are one step closer to becoming a successful freelance writer.
Here l will show you how to put all the above tools together to make you a freelance writer.
But if you do not yet have all of the above as a beginner, this tutorial will be all you need.
And to be clear, you can get going as soon as you are done with this tutorial, and a few things you don’t already have will fall into place later.
If on the other hand, you have tried Freelancing but did not find any success, go check this article and see what you may be doing wrong
So let us dig deeper.
Be acquainted with Upwork.
Since you are new to freelance writing, your best bet would be to sign up with Upwork.
Using Upwork gives you the opportunity to get the exposure you need as a beginner.
You have the rare privilege of working with reputable brands.
You are in charge of your time as you work hourly based on your set requirements.
The clients you get on Upwork are more likely to pay well for your services so long as you are top-notch.
How to get jobs as a freelance writer
What will it profit you to learn how to write as a freelancer if you do not get clients?
Here are some straightforward ways to get clients when you start your writing career.
- Partner and hang out with other freelancers
- consider giving out something for free, maybe volunteering your service for some worthwhile goals.
- Get valuable feedback from any client you land
- Use and write on Linkedin as much as you can
- Connect with active Linkedin members
- Be friendly with your prospects
- Embrace the Jobes no one loves to do, and be good at them.
- Run a paid ad linking to your landing page
- In all your emails, endeavor to have only one Call To Action, as having multiple of CTAs will lower your conversion.
choose the right niche as a freelance writer
This determines if you are going to make it on freelancing or not.
Start from what you are already passionate about. Whatever it is that interests you is a good place to start.
It may be you are so excited about football, perhaps you are a dog lover, or maybe your love swimming so much that you spend your free time reading, watching, or discussing with your peers the topics that interest you.
That there is an easy place to start your freelance writing.
Start with what you already know something about and take it from there.
Are you a good relationship advisor? Do your friends always come to you looking for advice on certain things in life, start writing about those.
But if writing is really your thing, you can make it writing about virtually any basic topic. All it takes is a bit of research which l will show you how to do in a moment.
When done with the above, you will have to zero in the specific service you will render, for now, do not go too broad until you are really good at the specific tasks you supply.
Having figured out your niche, that is, what topic or topics you will be writing about, let us now move to the next thing on our list.
We will be talking about the setup in a moment but for now, let’s quickly highlight some of the jobs you can do as a freelancer.
what sort of jobs can you do as a freelance writer?
As an online writing specialist, you can choose from a variety of fields to write on, and there is a high demand for each of the below niches.
- CONTENT WRITING
- COPYWRITING
- BLOGGING
- SEO WRITING
- GHOSTWRITING
- bUSINESS TO BUSINESS (B2B)
- MEDICAL WRITING
- TECHNICAL WRITING
- ACADEMICS AND RESEARCH
- SOCIAL MEDIA WRITING
- WRITING FOR A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION.
As you can see from the above, there are countless options to choose from.
With that out of the way, let’s work on your setup.
the initial setup you need before you start freelance writing
Set up your portfolio as soon as you are done reading this. Setting up a portfolio at this time helps you to put things into perspective and creates a sense of direction for you.
A portfolio is literally a folder, website page, or where ever it is you store documents relating to your field as a freelance writer.
It is a collection of the jobs you would want your prospective clients to see and go through them to enable them to make a decision about whether to hire you or not. So you would want to put in your best work there.
how to create a portfolio
- Get practical. A good place to start creating your portfolio is clippings. It is so simple to set up that it takes only a few minutes.
- With Clippings, all you have to do is add your biography, customize the look and feel, and add your work and you are good to go. They even give you the option to add video media and use and set up a contact form. There are a host of other awesome features to explore.
- At this point, you need a dedicated email address. For now, you can go for Gmail. This gives you access to a host of other services by Google that will be very useful. Keep this separate from your emails if possible.
- In your Gmail account, locate your Google Drive and create as many folders as you will need to store your relevant files. You can create subfolders inside the main folders to store all your files.
- A pro tip is to create your main folder with the following naming convention:
- Your name, dash,
- Portfolio, and client/project name.
- After that, go ahead and create your subfolders’ names according to their respective niche.
- Add Your Jobs: Now comes the time to add all your documents to Google Drive. Jobs that you have completed in the past. Make sure this is the best and make it coherent as your client might be in for his first impression
Demonstrate your ability
- Show evidence of your ability to do and deliver the job you seek.
- Cite any work you have, like the previous article you have written. This does not necessarily need to be the one written for a client.
- You can put in your social media articles if they are well written. As a beginner, you can start by writing and posting authentic articles on sites like Ezine Article, Facebook pages, LinkedIn, and the like of them. In that case, you will have something to refer to.
- As part of your setup, do refer to the affiliate marketing articles written by you previously if you have one. The idea here is to give evidence of your ability.
- (Take a moment now and create a profile on EzineArticles or another article directory of your choice) You can do a simple Google search to see a good number of them
- Please remember to name your documents in such a way that your prospective clients will have a logical way of looking at them. Do not just throw documents in there at random.
- For instance, if you have documents related to a landing page, you will be doing yourself a favor by adding them to a separate folder. or perhaps you have work related to Facebook marketing, keep them under one folder. That way your client will be able to follow through on what you have to showcase without any hassle.
Take your freelance writing to greater heights with this tips
If you want to take it further as am sure you will. Go ahead and
- list some of the excitement you experienced while doing the jobs you mentioned above, and
- list some of the key roles you played, like project development and so on.
- Add a sharing button or grant access. This is important if you are using my suggestion of google Drive. And do remember to restrict editing authority so that your files can only be viewed by your clients but not edited.
Give Something Out for Free
Whenever I talk about or instruct on how to start writing as a freelancer, I must mention the below fact:
“Always provide value upfront”
Do you do or are you willing to do a few jobs for free? If yes, you will have to add it to your portfolio, but be wary of this so that you do not give the impression that you are desperate.
What I did when I first started was to give a free trial version of my service to selected clients who have the potential for long-term business.
Be sure to capture the emails of those clients through your lead generation.
That way, they can have a thirst for what it is like to work with you.
get the word out
For now, you do not have to border about listing your service in a thousand places. of course, if you have the means to do it, go ahead and do it.
But to get going, head over to Fiverr and create a gig. This is a free service, you only pay when you make a sale. I wouldn’t border telling you here and now how to set up a gig as there is a whole page dedicated to that.
But to be fair, once you land on Fiverr, simply search for the service you are about to offer, in this case ‘Freelance writing’ and you will see what other sellers have put up. That will give you the idea
other places you may want to check out
- Upwork
- Outsourcely: this is good if you would want to work remotely and not just as a freelancer.
- Guru
- TopTal
More specific resources
- Flexjobs
- Mediabistro
- Clearvoice
- Contently
- Skyword
- Constant Content
The next is the question of how much you should charge. I have a surprise for you
forget about rates for now
I have seen students focus on making it big here that they forget or neglect to build their businesses properly.
If you channel your energy into building a reputable writing business, the money will come. A side tip for you: before you decide on your price, it is good you look out for clients who are willing to work with you on a long-term basis. That is where the money is.
So you will have to choose between 50 recurring dollars or 150 one-time clients as an example.
Get the needed training
And Subscribe To Essential Newsletters That Will Help You Keep Abreast With Current Demands In The Market
now you are ready to start writing as a freelancer
I know you are eager to start writing and making money.
Before you actually begin, l will advise you to create a social media handle.
For a start, you can create a Facebook page. The advantage is immense as you will use it to gather a lot of followers and since Facebook is tied to Instagram, you have more chances of exposure than many people who do not see the need to have a social media handle.
After this, you will need to create a profile with LinkedIn, as it is an ideal place to show yourself as a serious freelancer.
At first, clients may not come as you expected despite how much you have pruned your skills.
In that case, what you do is go look for them. Here is how it works:
Know Your Customers (Customer Persona)
You possibly cannot serve the whole world, maybe someday you will but for now, develop your
Customer Persona is simply an imaginary description of your clients, who they are, what their age is, and their gent and location are among the thing you need to figure out in your customer persona. What is their pain point that you are ready to solve? What Promise are you making that will get them to your paying client list?
If you take a moment to figure out who your ideal customers are, it will be easy to find, market and pitch to them. You can check out our Customer Persona and see who carter to.
Now that you know who your customer is. let us pitch to them.
Pitching to your Clients
This is the fun part if you do it the right way. Pitching is simply telling your potential hirers what you do, how you can help them in their business and why they should hire you.
It is easier said than done. Pitching is a lot of work. And many freelancers are too lazy to do it, or they just do it wrong. It is good to mention that it is much the same thing with sending out proposals to people who will be interested in what you do.
Indeed, you can always get clients from freelance platforms, but you will secure your most important clients through a pitch.
Pitching simply means that you will have to go out and look for your clients by making white hat contact with them.
A good place to start is through LinkedIn, Forums, and sometimes Facebook.
When you spot a potential client, do not just throw your pitch at them. Do your homework, find out who they are, what they want, and what is their pain point.
Are there things you can help improve in their business that they may not be aware of? Creatively point that to them and express your willingness to work with them.
Things to look out for in your pitches
You do not want to waste your time sending out emails that will bounce or not be opened. Paying attention to things that work will help you get your messages across without sounding like the old salesman.
- Make your subject line very catchy
- Research each of your clients thoroughly. This might sound like a lot of job but one percent of success is enough to pay for it.
- Incorporate samples or access to samples into your pitch
- Make deliberate use of statistics in your presentation
- It is better to ask for permission first before you pitch depending on the scenario
- Expect questions in your pitch meeting
- If using written means, raise those questions your client is likely going to ask and answer them as simply as possible
Pitfalls to avoid in your Pitches
- Never overwhelm your client with a long email. Nobody have that time
- Do not overly focus on yourself or your company, show your listener how you can make their life easier
- Avoid the overuse of industry Jargon
- Not all details need to be mentioned at this stage, your objective now is to rouse interest.
- Not preparing for the pitching meeting
- Do not be generic with your pitches, humans are dynamic creatures and so is the need of every client
- Missing the important elements
With all of the above, you now have what it takes to write for money. Remember it takes a bit of patience to see the results as this is not a get-rich-quick thing.
It is for people who really want to build a business or at least make passive income with the willingness to put in the work.
How are you feeling about this guide on how to start freelancing?
Go ahead and start practicing all the things you have learned above.
Please tell me in the comment section what you feel about the tutorial and drop any questions you have, l promise to answer you.
With all of the above, you now have what it takes to write for money. Remember it takes a bit of patience to see the results as this is not a get-rich-quick thing.
It is for people who really want to build a business or at least make passive income with the willingness to put in the work.
But what if you are still struggling to write good content in the shortest amount of time? Then you must find out how the experts are creating more than 2000 words engaging content in as little as 30 minutes.
