Ever wondered what is freelance writing? As a part of our daily lives, we visit search engines at least once a day for some information.
Have you ever wondered about how Google would get all the information for your problems? Is it that people working for Google write it? If it is not, then who writes it?
Do you think that you have a passion for writing? Do you write in a way that persuades and convinces people? If yes, then you should consider digging deep into the matter.
Because everybody writes some sort of information every day but only a few will have the ability to write the content that could change lives.
You can make a career out of your writing skills but only if you are willing to stay consistent with the market trends. And now, how do you become successful freelance writers? Read further
Before going further, understand what freelancing is before learning about freelance writing.
What is Freelancing?
Freelancing is a term used to represent a person working independently. And a freelancer is someone working themselves with their own rules and regulations without having others to guide them over anything.
To simply put it out, freelancing and freelancer are the same, and the person as a freelancer can work with multiple clients independently. He enjoys the profits and the losses all by himself.
As a freelancer, you work from the comfort of your zone unlike a day job, which means you do not have to worry about going to the office to work.
Many people beginning their freelancing journey always choose to start as freelance writers.
1. Freelance Writing the Ultimate Guide
Photo by Andrew Neel on unsplash. Copyright 2017
Freelance Writing is a profession for self-employed freelance writers working independently. As a freelance content writer, you offer writing services to a person who would hire you for their writing services.
You get all the work details mailed to you by the client and you are required to submit the completed work before the deadline. After which you get paid.
The work that you get varies from client to client based on their requirements. The work you get maybe article writing or a blog post, etc. but all forms of writing come under content writing.
1.1. What is Content Writing?
Content is a piece of information. Anything you come across that carries a message is known as a piece of content. And when you write that piece of information, it is known as content writing. While content writing is like an umbrella, the other types of freelance writing take cover under it. The other writings include
- Copywriting
- Marketing Copies
- Article writing
- SEO articles
- Writing web pages
- White papers
- Magazine articles
- Medical writing
- Writing social media posts
- Ghostwriting
- YouTube content
- Blog posts, etc.
These are the other types of freelance writing, where each one of them has its purpose and different goals to achieve.
2. What does a Content Writer do?
As a content writer or a freelance writer, you write content and you work in various niches and areas depending on your skills and capabilities.
For instance, if you have great research skills then you would opt to write blog posts, articles, marketing copies, etc. or if you have a creative mind, then you would go for poetry, writing short stories, and work on big projects like E-books, etc.
If you have wondered how Google gets all the information, here is the explanation. so, whatever the information Google gives you when you search for something, it is written by the content writers and the bloggers, not by the employees working for Google, LOL.
However, these two terms will confuse you with content writing as all three looks similar.
2.1. Difference Between Content Writing and Content Marketing?
This is one of those areas where the beginners will be confused all the time. They spend half of their available time differentiating between these two terms. These two terms might look similar but have completely different purposes.
Content marketing is the process of distributing the content written by the content writer. It is up to the client to use the content in different ways as per his needs that would promise him his desired results.
He may market or use the content as social media posts, or articles, or even may use it for podcasts, etc.
2.3. Difference Between Content Writing and Copywriting?
These two sets of writing forms are very important in today’s internet world. A freelance content writer writes the content to inform and educate people while freelance copywriters write the content (called a copy) to convince people to take action.
Content examples are YouTube videos, blog posts, articles, etc.
Copywriting examples are sales pages, ads on YouTube, etc.
3. How to Become a Successful Freelance Writer?
There are many strategies one can follow to become a successful freelance writer. However, the super basic method provided here can help you out and if followed as they are instructed, you can see great results.
Before going further, if you doubt your freelance writing skills or are worried about getting freelance writing gigs, put them all aside for you are going to learn everything.
You do not need to be a professional writer with excellent writing skills. All you need is the super basic written and oral English (around the 5th to 7th-grade level) and the basics of search engine optimization.
That’s it, you are good to start a freelance writing career.
4. For Freelance Writers:
Here is the only freelance writing strategy you need, learn what it takes to become a self employed writer
4.1. Find What Your Freelance Writing Niche Is
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
This is one of the most common mistakes any new freelance writer can make is getting into the freelance writing work without having a clear idea of what they are going to write about.
To avoid this mistake you need to find what you enjoy most writing about. Because in the freelancing world, there will be no one to guide you through anything.
So, if you chose something that you do not enjoy, it is inevitable that you would end up losing interest and motivation.
So, your niche is the particular industry or a topic you would work on as a content writer. It is better to be as specific as possible. As you gain experience in a particular niche you can move on to the other freelance writing niche as well.
For instance, let’s say that you love traveling, and writing about traveling would be your niche.
4.2. Develop Research Skills
This is one of the freelance writing skills and new freelance writers need to work on it, though it does not have anything to do with writing, in contrast, it is a source of your writing.
To write articles, to frame a perfect content marketing strategy and the entire freelance writing business runs on the process of research.
Anything you are writing should be unique, factual, and filled with valuable content and to make that happen you have to dig deep into the subject given to you.
This requires a lot of effort like referring to tens of articles, blogs, case studies, meeting people, etc.
Understanding the current market system and knowing which platform gives you what information and learning a proper search system is the key to mastering research skills.
To do the proper research or to collect information use free tools like
- Google Scholar
- Quora
- Social media posts, etc.
Each one of these sources is a great tool to research the topic since they provide different information.
4.3. Build Expertise in Your Niche
It does not matter how much you love the niche you chose, there will be something that you might be lagging in what other writers have.
Freelance clients looking to hire freelance writers will always require you to have expertise in the topic you are providing your writing services.
To say that you have expertise in a topic, you should at least have a minimum knowledge of 60% and 80% at maximum, and the remaining 20% will be fluctuating from time to time.
The knowledge available in that 20% might be worthwhile and workable today while it might be outdated tomorrow, which is why you need to be consistent with the marketing trends.
You can take free courses, read books and learn from other experienced writers to gain expertise in your writing niche.
4.4. Gain Experience
Any field either a full-time job or a part-time job requires your experience to get hired.
To build writing experience from 0 to 1 year is super hard whereas building experience from 1 and above years is super easy. So, as a new freelance writer how do you build your writing experience?
There are multiple ways you can follow to build your writing experience
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Start Your Own Blog
You do not need to have a professional website to blog. However, platforms such as medium.com and LinkedIn can help you.
Publish a few blog posts in your niche on one of these platforms to understand how the actual process goes, and this can also act as the writing samples for your future clients.
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Work with Brands
Brands love to hire writers because the new writer is less expensive to afford and they can provide the services more than what they are asked for.
A month of internship can almost give you two months of experience, and this can be the best way to build your experience as a fresher.
Search for the companies or content agencies that are recruiting the writers and submit your application. Since you do not have any prior experience they will hire you on a writing assignment for them based on the title given to you.
Or if you are living in a city, you can pitch your services to the local businesses, explaining how you can help them. You will be hired if they admire your work.
4.5. Build a Portfolio
After all the hard work you have put into, your portfolio will make or break your dream.
Your portfolio is something that contains your personal information such as your contact number, email id, or some other links to take an interview or get on a discovery call, and all the project titles you’ve worked on, samples of your work, testimonials, and more importantly the services you provide.
Your portfolio can be of any type. Either a website, a google drive link, a pdf, or a word doc. Here is how you can create the best portfolio that can promise you freelance gigs.
- Page-1: About you
- Page-2: Your Primary Services
- Page-3: Samples of your work
- Page-4: Results of your previous work
- Page-5: Testimonials
- Page-6: How to contact you
By the time you come to this point, you would have developed all the necessary skills that you would need to work in real freelance writing jobs.
4.6. Work with Potential Clients
There are two different ways to get clients. Freelance gig platforms such as freelancers.com, fiver.com, upwork.com and are followed by social media.
The difference between social media and freelance gig platforms is the pay structure.
On freelance gig platforms when you are getting paid 25% of your income would be gone under the transaction charges and other deductions. Whereas in social media you get paid in full through PayPal without any pay cuts.
5. How to Get a Freelance Writing Job or Freelance Clients?
If you made it this far, you would have created your own freelance writing business, which means as an owner it is your responsibility to create a steady stream of income by working with different clients.
On freelance gig platforms you can directly contact and bid your services and now, we are talking about getting clients through social media.
On social media handles such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn you have to search for freelance work and freelance jobs.
Online job boards can help you out with this. Or search for freelance jobs on one of those platforms and pitch your services to potential clients.
Final Words:
Content Writing is one of the most booming industries across the world. Anything that’s happening on the internet and that is yet to happen will be completely based on content writing.
-Edited by Steffy Michael|5/7/22
Last Updated on by ritukhare
