What Freelance Writers need to know to get started

Freelancing is one great way to make money online and can easily replace your day job. It offers you the freedom and flexibility that are so central to a happy work life. You can work on what you like, when you like, and still make as much or more than your day job, which is why more and more people are preferring to work on their own through the freelancing route.

If you are an IT professional or a software programmer, chances are that you will get good high paying projects from a number of clients. Freelance writing, however, is a completely different ball game altogether. Writing requires skills quite different from other types of jobs, and therefore it is better to understand and appreciate them before you take the plunge.

It is true that most freelance sites, whether they be the old established names like Elance, Guru or newer ones like oDesk or specialized ones like RentACoder, contain majority of the jobs in the area of IT, software and web development. This means if you do not possess any skills related to computers, your chances of landing at least half these jobs are immediately zero. The next best thing that you should and can aim for is freelance writing, which is exciting and fun and well paying. As Voltaire said, “Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need”, so freelance writing will keep you going and keep you engaged!

Not Everyone who can Write is a Writer!

Yes, that’s true! Just because you can form grammatically correct sentences doesn’t mean that you can become a writer. There are many qualities that any writer should possess. It may not sound as technical as IT programming and web development, but certainly writing is an art that has been with us for millenia. This means certain skills are much more important than others when you want to begin your quest of freelance writing.

The good news is that almost anyone can learn the art of writing, though it may take some time. Therefore if your English is good, then you can learn the art of writing to suit the marketplace. This is important because finally your money through freelancing comes from what your clients want and not necessarily what you are good at.

Thus if you are good at writing poetry but people don’t want it, then chances are you will not make enough money out of this art. Always remember that it is a competitive market out there, which means you need to cater to exactly what the clients want.

Types of Freelance Writing Jobs

Freelance  writers need to be highly flexible with respect to the kind of jobs that they do. Few writers have a specific niche in which they specialize. However, most writers usually are good in more than one type of writing. Skills required in one type of writing job usually overlap with those of another type. Therefore if you understand the subtle differences between different types of writing jobs, you can get a good overall idea of what is expected from you.

• Articles: These are the basic building blocks that are needed for a variety of reasons. Primarily, however, you will write for two types – website content and article directories.

In website content, you will usually be hired by a small business or a start up who want to fill their website with useful content. Therefore if you are hired by a firm that specializes in ethnic jewelry, you may be required to do your research in this niche and come up with articles that will prove beneficial to the reads and they can gain value out of the site. In these types of articles, you have more freedom as a writer with respect to what you can write about and can bring in a lot of creativity. Usually the web content articles give you a little more freedom with respect to the article size and number of words and you can pick the right length as far as you are able to cover everything relevant without being repetitive.

In the other type of article writing which is for article submissions, you  as a freelance writer need to be more careful and professional. This is because article directories are usually very strict with the quality of articles that they accept. They are usually around 500 words but this is only a rule of thumb. The quality needs to be very good. You don’t have as much freedom to experiment. A business may hire you for articles to be submitted to article directories when they want to drive more traffic to their website. By linking their site to the article submitted, you are effectively helping people visit their website. Therefore it is absolutely essential that the article you write provides quality information so that the reader would like to know more and visit your client’s website.

• Blogs: Blogs are the next common writing task that you may be asked to write as a freelance writer. Blogs are a little different from articles in that they are usually more conversational and less informative. This doesn’t mean blogs are fluff, but they are more engaging to read. Thus the secret of good blogging is to select the right topic to write on and the right heading that can grab the attention of the reader. In addition, smaller sentences and paragraphs are usually more appealing to the online audience to read.

• Web content: Web content is usually the pages present on a website. This means you will need to write a few sentences on each page that the website is about. Therefore if you are writing about a fashion store that displays the latest fashion trends in the website, you will be expected to write something different and unique for each page, even when the trends might look similar. This can be challenging and usually the freelance writer can get very creative in this area.

• Copywriting: Copywriting is a very specialized skill that requires the writer to understand the product and the target market very well. Since copywriting is a lot to do with the advertising and marketing side of business, not every writer can be good at copywriting. However, if you think you have the flair of writing and convincing people, then copywriting is certainly for you. One immediate advantage of copywriters is that they are usually paid much more than writers writing for blogs and articles. This is because copywriting is quite a skilled endeavor and therefore not too many people are good at it. At the same time, there are not thousands of jobs offered that relate to copywriting, so the niche is small and specific. If you think you can specialize here, then it will be a big boost to your freelance writing career.

• Other/Miscellaneous writing: There can be many other types of writing jobs too. For example, you may be asked to write a technical document for a technical company or come up with a punchline for a business (similar to copywriting but only a very small assignment – just one punchline!) or write a poem/verse to promote a given product. Some businesses may need a script for a play or a whole screenplay for a short film or a chapter in a novel. As a freelance writer, you should be open to assignments that do not fall under the traditional umbrellas. This will help you be flexible for your clients, which is a big plus.

Here are some qualities that any freelance writer should possess in order to succeed at freelance writing. If you want to get started with freelance writing, you should keep these in mind and decide whether you are the right person for this job. Note that the qualities that a freelance writer needs to possess may be somewhat different from what you would expect a usual writer to possess, say who writes a novel.

Apart from the ones mentioned here, you will of course need other qualities like being self-motivated, hard working, ability to work in a team and ability to take initiative, creativity, etc. I am listing below some additional skills that freelance writer needs.

• Good language skills: This is the most basic necessity that you must possess. Since most writing jobs are in English, it is safe to say that you need to have very good English skills. Native or non-native speakers can both have excellent levels of written English, so if you are not a native English speaker, you are not really at a disadvantage. Only when you can express your ideas into language can you give meaning and shape to your ideas in the form of what you write.

There is one area where there is less competition and more rewards and that doesn’t need very great language skills. This is restricted to people who are bilingual. Translation jobs are quite in vogue with the internet spreading its roots to different parts of the world. Therefore if you can write well in English and another language, translation jobs are perfect for you. You can get great jobs translating and writing for a Spanish website, for example, and the pay too is usually higher due to lack of adequate skilled translators in the market. Thus for people who are good with languages, translating jobs are very productive and should be considered seriously.

Bilingual workers have always been preferred over their counterparts and this trend is only going to get more favorable to the bilingual workers. Being bilingual is a skill and you should use it well to make money through freelance writing.

• Good research skills: This is not a quality that you might associate with a traditional writer, but a freelance writer is much more flexible that a traditional writer. Good research skills are a MUST for any successful freelance writer. This is because the topics that you choose to write on are dependent not on your own strengths but on the requirements of your clients. Freelance writers who are very selective can never be very successful because of a very limited choice of assignments they can work for. Therefore in order to beat the competition and stand out, a freelance writer needs to be highly flexible.

This means you may be writing on interior home decoration for one client, organic gardening for another and a guide to the best IT software solutions for yet another. Therefore to be open to all these projects, one needs to have good research skills. Good implies a good quality and also fast research because you don’t want to be spending half your time simply going through the matter that you may be writing about.

No person in the world can know everything about the scope under which freelance writers operate. This means at some point or another, sooner or later, you will certainly need to write on something that you are not an expert in and don’t know much about. This is where you need to first research the topics and then write the content.

Google is of course the primary resource that any researcher is going to use. However, there are other specialized resources that freelance writers often use for their research. For example, if you are totally unaware of the topic at hand, Wikipedia usually offers a great overview of the subject.

On the other hand, if you are looking to get a quick broad overview of exactly the kind of writing that you would like to do or if you are looking for ideas for topics to write on, then Ezine is the right place to search for. This is especially so for articles that you may want to write.

For blog ideas, you may like to look at websites like Technorati that are a collection of a number of blogs. This of course also depends on the niche of the blog that you are writing for. Technorati is mainly for technology. For Fortune 500 business blogs, for example, you may get some great business ideas from SocialText.

Newspapers are another great source of research and ideas. For example if you are looking for contemporary topics on economics, The Economist might be a great place to start. For general news, you may consider sites like The New York Times’ site. If you are looking at country-specific sites, you can find them on the net. Google also allows you to search for keywords in recent news, which is a nice feature you can use for research.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Skills: SEO skills is something that a freelance online writer needs to consider seriously and something that may be unheard of for an offline writer. A lot of writing that you will do as a freelance writer involves attracting traffic to the website of your client. Therefore it is important that the article, blog or content that you write for the website appears high up in search engine rankings. When this happens, more people are likely to visit the site and therefore you are helping drive traffic to their website, which fulfills the aim of hiring you in the first place.

SEO is a slightly tricky business for a freelance writer because you will need to include certain keywords that do not appear naturally in written English. Thus you may at times need to include some ‘awkward’ looking keywords that do not make much sense. This is where you will need to involve your creativity.

For example, writing for a real estate website, you may be asked to include a keyword “best land prices California”. This is something that people might routinely enter into a search engine. However, such a phrase is not something that you would normally use in a piece of writing. You can then use some techniques like introducing a punctuation after prices and before California. Thus you may write something like ” … Most homeowners would naturally look for best land prices. California offers great land prices if one is willing to look. …” You have now included a hard to include keyword in your writing. Such tricks need to be employed regularly by a freelance writer and you should be prepared for the same.

The Journey

Almost anyone who is a literate can come up with a small piece of writing and call themselves a writer. However, as a freelance writer, you will need a lot of quality. This is the most important aspect you should look for. You should be able to bring forth what is in your mind on to the piece of writing and get a point across to the reader. Good freelance writers are not as common as you may be tempted to think at first, and therefore it is quite a niche market in itself. You have a good chance of entering it if you follow the whole post and the advice given here.

Firstly, to get started, you should first select a freelance site where you can bid on projects. Here is a small guide to help you out in this quest. You can also independently sell your work at different sites. However, that is quite a lot of hard work and not recommended for beginners. As you experience the thrills of a writer on your way, you can diversify and try out more ‘exotic’ options available to a writer. For now, it is best if you can stick to the usual sites that offer a meeting place between buyers and providers.

The initial part of freelance writing is the most difficult because you do not have a proven track record. Therefore for the very initial part, you may need to work at very low prices. In my personal case, my first assignment was to deliver 5 articles at a rate of 20cents/article! However, within a month’s time, I was able to command a price of $5/article of similar length and quality. Though this may not sound very good, it is a good start. Once you have your first assignment, try to get the best feedback possible because a good feedback can make you go places later on. Do your best and try to over-deliver to impress the buyer and facilitation that 5 star rating.

The initial days of search might also seem quite frustrating, but if you can persevere through this dark phase, you can really make a niche for yourself in the wonderful world of freelance writing. If you believe you have the talent, go for it and never give up, especially in the initial days. Those who like to write will truly enjoy the experience of freelance writing even when the going gets tough; recollecting Gandhi – “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.”

The secret to bagging those coveted assignments is to write a very personalized cover letter explaining your work history and why you are different from the 20 others who might apply for this assignment. Give some quality and some differentiating qualities that you possess when compared to the others. Also be ready to work for a sum lesser than what your skills command for the very initial stage. This should not go on in the long run because you should never work for below what your skills command. However, in the very initial stage when your main aim is to establish yourself as a great writer, it is wise to make an exception.

One final practical tip – if you don’t already know touch-typing, learn it soon! This will save you a lot of time in putting your thoughts on the computer screen. Since copying anything from the internet is outright plagiarism and totally unacceptable, you will need to rephrase things that you read online quite often. In such cases, it greatly helps if you can type fast.

Within a few months, you should be able to establish yourself as an authority in writing if you are good. The initial days of struggle will certainly be worth the effort. Once you establish yourself and have a proven track record, you can be assured to bag great assignments that will help you earn much more than your day-job. If you are truly passionate about writing, then freelance writing is just the thing for you and you should give it a try. You may find your true passion in this field.

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