Freelance Writing For Extra Income - How You Can Succeed As A Freelance Writer

Want To Get Started As A Freelance Writer?

When the "economy hit" last fall, in 2009, I was pretty hard-hit. Immediately I lost $12k annually in a pay decrease, and wasn't sure what to do. Thankfully, I was told about freelance writing. I thought, "Sure, I write at a bazillion words a second, and I love it, why not?"

(Yes, that's a shameless lie, it's more like 1/2-a-bazillion words a minute. I'm slowing down.)

I was turned onto freelance writing on Elance and immediately plunged into the fray. The way Elance, oDesk, Guru and other freelancing sites work is fairly similar: they all have a bidding system, auction-like, to connect freelancers with the employers looking for help.

It's not just writers, but programmers, photographers, marketers, web designers...anything you can digitize pretty much has a market.

How easy is it to start freelance writing?

The process itself is easy: you create a profile, sign up for the service (fees range from $9.95 or thereabouts a month on up, and you can try them out for free but have limited opportunity), and begin bidding on jobs. For Elance, you will:

1. Create a Profile
2. Take a Skills Test
3. Add your Bank Account information to accept payment
4. Buy "Connects" (these are bid-credits on Elance: 1 Connect per job for a job less than $500, jobs $500-$1,000 are 2 Connects, etc.)
5. Bid, baby, BID!

As to the question, "How easy is it?" Honestly, it is very challenging to begin freelancing.  It helps to join groups like Freelance Writers Club to get advice from others in the industry.

The main challenges are as follows:

• Having Patience: Just because you bid a job, you will not necessarily hear from the employer immediately.
  
• Having Negotiation Skills: You have to understand this is a global economy: you are bidding in a free market on Elance and these other providers. You will need to have some flexibility in price, some way to provide an incentive to hire you versus the world...things are competitive.
  
• Having an Ability to Close: Every bid you put out is a mini-sale, you are selling your skill set to a potential employer/client, so you need to close the deal with your proposal.
• Persistence: Let me cut to the chase: I did not get my first job my first month. It took me 1.5 months to get my first gig. It will take time, do not give up!
• Resume or Reputation: Nobody knows you. Unless you are famous, it won't matter that you graduated magna cum laude from Harvard: you have to make a name for yourself to make it, and prove you've got the chops.

How Can I Get My First Job As A Freelance Writer?

There are some free ways that you can get hired as a freelance writer, and different venues. I recommend focusing on one venue at a time, otherwise you will only do half as well in a hundred venues. What I suggest is to increase your credibility by creating a portfolio first.

The reason to create a portfolio is obvious: you want to generate trust and credibility so that you can assuage the concerns of your prospective employer/client, and generate a reasonable amount of good faith that you can deliver as promised.

Otherwise, they are taking a risk that you will deliver according to your proposal, with nary a reason to substantiate those claims.

Here are some ways to create a winning portfolio (or what I did, anyhow):

1. Test on Elance (or whichever freelancing site you're on). There is a skills test on Elance, Guru and oDesk that will tell prospective clients that you're good to go in X, Y and Z skill set. This is important to overcome the sales resistance, or hiring resistance, of your prospective client.
2. Create a Website. You do not have to use a self-hosted website, you can create a blog or HubPages or other social sites for free. Be professional on the website, and speak in the tone that you want your client to assume you use all the time. In other words, a personal blog based on your religious affiliation will not hold much traction, nor a goofy blog written about the latest redneck jokes you've found - this is a business-based portfolio with professional content you want to create.
3. Create an EzineArticles account. This is free, and what you want to do is showcase your writing skills. Why EzineArticles? Simply because they are one of the toughest editorial teams around (one of the toughest, mind you, not the toughest). Try to get to platinum status -- you can read more about that on EzineArticles.com.
4. Create a SearchWarp account. This community of writers is far more editorially tough than EzineArticles - they are 100% a writer's community, and your content is voted up or down based on the perceived value according to other writers. Fare well there, and you have some credibility as a writer.
5. Create an Associated Content and Suite101 account. Like the above, these sites are for writers, and will actually pay you for your writing. They are tough to break into, but cost nothing to join.

All of the links in your EzineArticles (the resource box or Author's Box at the bottom of the articles you create can have 2 out-bound links) should point to your blog or HubPages, where you further showcase your skills as a writer.

In fact, you should do so with the other venues as well: create hyperlinks to a blog or Hub, etc., where you further talk about the niche that you are best in. If it is business, or making money online, or cooking, or whatever the case is: this is a massive, self-generated C.V.

Then, when you bid, you will have:

• Elance Portfolio
• All these other sites to point to

And this collectively is a great way to show that you do, indeed, know how to write, you have joined other writer forums and social sites, and you have web properties to show for it.

Having done all of the above, this is how to get your first job:

• Subscribe to the RSS feed of the Writing/Translation category (or whatever freelance category you're in). This will tell you when new jobs come up.
• Buy enough Connects. Sometimes you need to get a second batch of 30 Connects, if so: do it.
• Use every Connect - do NOT wait until you get hired! Don't bid on one job and then wait...bid on every job that you can, and keep going until you are hired. Persistence is key.
• Follow "#Jobs" on Twitter. This is Elance's way of Tweeting their jobs - they have other Twitter hash tags, but make sure you know when a new job is posted.
• When you get declined, go back into the same bid and re-bid. Getting the "you have been declined" message is to be interpreted as: "Try again." Do not give up, this actually works.

Do these things consistently and you will get your first gig. Begin with lower prices than you think you want, and build up from there. The bigger jobs will come with more credibility on Elance.

And if you want to Hire me (yes, a shameless plug, and I could use the work!)

You Can See My Elance Profile at "JamestheJust" under "writers/translators" or "Sales/marketing" I think...

Or email me here on HubPages.

My experience is as follows:

• SEO and Keyword Research
• Web Content
• Article Marketing
• Getting Backlinks
• On-Page SEO site critique and tips to get ranked
• Press Releases
• Sales Pages that Convert
• AdSense optimization
• Affiliate Marketing (generating converting landing pages)
• Sales Funnels
• Link Wheels

AND: I can make a really mean fried rice!

;)

Hire Me On Elance Here

Or contact me on HubPages.

There is all the difference in someone who is a freelance writer fighting for the scraps under the table, and someone who has a genuine marketable skill.  That is the key to your success online or in any endeavor, and I'll tell you three areas that will make you the most money, hands-down.

1. Writing your own web content ~ I mean websites and not just web 2.0 properties
2. Learning to write grants
3. Learning Copywriting ~ Write to Convert
   

1) The first on the docket is writing your own webcopy.  The reason this is the first in the list is that it's the easiest to do.  Practice here on HubPages - have as many Hubs as you want.  Use HubPages and other such properties to do two things:

• Learn which topics pay the most and get the most traffic.
• Perfect your skill.

There is no money lost, of course, but money to be made as you learn.  Having your own website means you keep all the revenue - some Hubbers may not like that I'm pushing that, but it's really not as difficult as a lot of Hubbers think.  Using WordPress you can find plenty of free themes that work as well as a premium theme.

Paying for hosting and domain names is not expensive, depending on where you shop (I only use 1&1 and Namecheap for my domain names so far, and JustHost for hosting - no problems with them, and more than made up for the annual fees).

Here's another angle why I think this is the best way to go: you get to control the layout of your ads, the number of your ads, the navigation...and you keep all your profits.  That's really the clincher.

With a web 2.0 property, you have little control - and what happens in the next corporate takeover when your Hubs, etc., get assimilated by someone less friendly with payouts?  Just food for thought - I actually love HubPages, but if I had 1/2 of the websites that many Hubbers have Hubs, I'd be sitting on top of a pile of cash...take it for what it's worth: once you learn the ropes of generating web content here on HP, you really need to take your top performing topics/Hubs and make them into a website.

Do it with your top 3 Hubs and build them out further, drive traffic and links to them...I think you'll see you've just made plenty of money freelance writing for yourself.

2) Learning to write grants is a bit more technical, perhaps the most of the three.  Nonetheless, if you can learn how to write grants for different groups, you will make money hand over fist.  Grants pay out $5k on the low end for start ups, and the sky's the limit.  On Elance I have seen grant gigs come through that were paying $50k, so it is food for thought.

I personally have yet to tap into this niche, but seeing those numbers has whet my appetite.  There is a lot of technical research involved, and usually grants are written in a team effort, so you will have a researcher, lawyers often, and your cut as the writer may only be 1/5 or 1/4 of the the entire job (unless you happen to do more than just writing).

The point of grant writing is to sell the financiers to support the project at hand, so copywriting is the skill at play.  Speaking of...

3) Copywriting is by far my favorite type of writing, next to writing my own web content.  At bottom, you will need to:

• Learn how to convince your reader to take action (sign up, join the list, make a purchase).
• Inform your reader why this product/service is something they need right now.
• Conduct researchso you can locate the benefits, do competitive analysis so you can show why your product/service is the one that the consumer needs and not your competitors'.
• Grab the reader's attention with a catchy headline, draw them in, tell a story and sell all the way down the page.

There is all the difference between a copywriter and a content writer for SEO purposes - and to tell the truth, I've just discovered from this thread on the Warrior Forum (an internet marketer's forum that you should check out) that I'm selling myself WAY short on my writing:

http://www.warriorforum.com/copywriting-forum/47866-tips-if-youre-looking-copywriter-difference-between-copywriter-article-writer.html

That opened my eyes to the potential of a good copywriter.  What chaps my hide is that I already write my own converting copy.   I've sold $22,000+ of a particular product in 6 months without really trying...wrote my own sales page and drove traffic to that page.

I've also been hired to write sales pages that convert - and that's the key to it: you need to learn how to write sales copy that converts.

These books will help with that, but let me leave you with this: freelancing does not mean you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.  If you lack sales writing skills, then learn them!  This is one of the easiest ways I know to make money online - and if you want to practice, then you can try your hand on your own websites, your Hubs (to a degree), Lenses at Squidoo, etc.

Build a portfolio of conversions, then go out and get high paying gigs.

Just in case you haven't read that thread listed - copywriting can make you $2,000 per page, or $500 if you're being cheap.  Anything less is a joke.