So would you like to become a freelance writer? What do you need to start? What should you do to succeed in this popular career?
This article has the answers for you. Read these tips and implement them to start a promising freelance writer career.
Pick the Right Vertical for Your Freelance Writing
Before you start, spend enough time to make the right decision on what vertical to pick as a freelance writer. Digital marketing is booming now due to pandemic. So, you may want to consider some of the following verticals:
- Writing emails and creating email sequences
- Writing copy for landing pages and online sales materials
- Writing copy for VSLs (video sales letters)
- Writing long-form articles and blog posts
- SEO copywriting
- Writing texts and short descriptions for social media
These are just a few examples to give you an idea. Of course, you can do your own research on it to come up with more ideas of verticals that you can pick for your future freelance writing career.
Create A Professional Website
Having a website may feel unnecessary for most freelancers, but it’s a great way to increase your credibility especially in your chosen niche.
Nowadays, information is readily available to anyone. Most (if not all) of your prospective clients will want to know more about you before they decide to avail of your services. Having a website will help you give the impression that you’re serious about your business and that you’re an expert they could trust.
Pick a domain name, a hosting service, and a website builder with pre-set themes if you want to fast-track the process without sacrificing the quality. If you’re unsure what pages to make, you can start with the basics: Home, About Me, Portfolio, Contact Page. You can build it up as you go along.
Pick a Niche for Your Freelance Writing Career
Ok, cool. Now you know what vertical to go for. What’s next? The next very important step that you should take is picking the niche. You’ve probably heard this saying “Riches are in the niches”. We can’t agree more with it.
Spend your time thinking of what niche it’s better to pick for you to write about. Obviously, it should be something you love to do or something you are well-versed and skilled at. Some of the most popular niches are:
- Beauty and wellness
- Relationship
- Make money online
- Digital marketing
- Survival
- Green energy
- Etc.
Again, these are just ideas for you to dwell on. Ideally, you should take it one step further and dwell upon each niche. For example, Beauty and wellness can be a too broad niche to target. So you may want to narrow it down to something like writing copy/emails for organic food brands.
Create A Professional Website
Having a website may feel unnecessary for most freelancers, but it’s a great way to increase your credibility especially in your chosen niche.
Nowadays, information is readily available for anyone. Most (if not all) of your prospective clients will want to know more about you before they decide to avail of your services. Having a website will help you give the impression that you’re serious about your business and that you’re an expert they could trust.
Pick a domain name and a website builder with pre-set themes if you want to fast-track the process without sacrificing the quality. It’s also important to be diligent in choosing your web hosting service as it can affect your SEO, and therefore, increase leads.
If you’re unsure what pages to make, you can start with the basics: Home, About Me, Portfolio, Contact Page. You can build it up as you go along.
Focus on Mastering Your Craft
Without being good at writing for your clients, it’s impossible to become a successful freelance writer. That’s why you should solely focus on mastering your craft. Depending on what vertical you pick for your freelance writing career, you may spend most of your time writing emails, VSLs, posts for social media, long-form blog posts, or copy for your clients’ marketing campaigns.
You definitely don’t want to spend all your time writing essays. That’s because it won’t advance you in your freelance writing career. That’s you may want to hire a writer for an essay to do it for you. Instead, you’ll be able to devote more time to your clients and honing your freelance writing skills.
Find First Clients Leveraging Your Own Network
What’s next? You’ve guessed it right! You need clients. How do you find them? Well, the best place to start is leveraging your existing network of contacts. It may turn out that you have some good leads in your contacts already. So why not take advantage of this low hanging fruit? You have a LinkedIn profile. You have a Facebook profile. You have an Instagram profile. You’ve got the idea.
First of all, you can create a simple post letting your contacts on each social media network know that you start a freelance writing career. You can tell them in a post that you would love to help your network with their projects if they have anything relevant. You may be surprised. However, in this way you can land your first client. Or maybe even you can land a couple of clients. That’s a good way to start.
Have No Samples? Work for Free for a Couple of Projects to Get Them!
Now. Let’s deal with the most common objection that you may face while pitching your services as a freelance writer. Yes, people will definitely ask you about samples. If you have them, that’s awesome. If you don’t, don’t worry. There is a good proven way to get them.
The fastest way to get samples in the niche you want is to offer you services for free. Plus, in this way, you can land a couple of good testimonials (if you do the job in a good way, of course).
Accept the Feedback from Your Clients and Keep Improving Your Skills
The next big step is to keep moving forward all the time. Don’t be arrogant that you know everything and you don’t need to learn. Even if you are a top expert in a certain domain, you still need to develop as a professional constantly. Don’t let your Ego blind you and become an obstacle to getting more clients and honing your freelance writing skills.
Ask your clients for their feedback. Accept it as it is. Be it positive or negative feedback, analyze it and think of what you can improve to take your freelance writing career to the next level.
Hire a Professional Editor to Edit Your Writing and Copy
This tip is very important as well. If you are dead serious about your career in freelance writing, be sure to hire a pro editor to edit your writing. It can improve the quality of your writing significantly in a very short period of time. More importantly, if you do so, your clients are more likely to be happy with the work you deliver to them. And guess what? Happy clients equal new orders for you and new referrals for you.
