7 Reasons To Become A Freelance Writer Online
By Paul Bright
Author of Write Your Life: The Beginner’s Guide To Freelance Writing Online
Copyright 2012 Paul Bright
This eBook/document is licensed for your personal enjoyment. Feel free to forward this work. This eBook/document may not be re-sold. All information is the original work of the author. The author does not guarantee results for any suggestions made. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Congratulations on receiving a free e-book from an expert content writer! I know that sounds a little egotistical, but take a look at my credentials.
I have over 2,000 articles published online (and counting). I have hundreds more completed for private clients. You can find me on sites like Yahoo! Voices, USA Today Online, Examiner, eHow and any of their clients. I’ve helped private clients increase their product sales just from producing written content they needed. I’m moving out of the business to focus on my own internet endeavors while occasionally working with private clients. I’ve decided to share what I know about freelance writing in my book, Write Your Life: The Beginner’s Guide To Freelance Writing Online.
Despite my seemingly self-indulgent accolades, there’s one thing that YOU have that I didn’t before I got started. You have experience and expertise in at least one field that I knew next to nothing about yet I made money writing about it.
But now clients want more authority behind the words. The same authority you have that I don’t. In a good economy, clients outsourced the writing tasks to people like me rather than task the expert such as you.
In today’s economy, it makes more sense for a client to hire the expert because the internet search engines and people’s feedbacks have let them know they want to read it straight from the expert. Don’t get me wrong, I do have areas of expertise. Those fields are where my best-paid work comes from.
The problem is that many experts can’t translate their knowledge into layman’s terms. Before we delve into the reasons you can become a freelance writer, let’s explore the freelance writer online job.
What Is Freelance Writing Online?
Freelance writing, in a nutshell, is producing written content for individual clients rather than as an official employee of a company. Time magazine, for example, hires writers to produce news articles for them as a condition of employment. Time may also choose to hire people they refer to as featured contributors or special guest writers. Those people are freelance writers. They don’t officially work for Time but they do work with Time.
On the internet, freelance writers are hired to do a number of jobs. Some produce web content, whereas writers would be hired on a contract basis to publish articles that fit the webmaster’s needs. If the webmaster sold vitamins, he might hire someone to write articles on the benefits of certain vitamins. These articles inform prospective buyers and add legitimacy to the website.
Professional bloggers. Freelance writers can also be professional bloggers. These writers are hired to frequently update and maintain a blog that’s sole purpose is to drive sales of a product or products. If the vitamin website had a blog, the blogger might enter weekly posts about what vitamin he took that day and how it helped during a specific workout. He might also comment on recent news reports about fitness and how the website’s products can help.
Article marketers. Article marketers are some of the more common freelance writers that work with individual clients. Their content is designed to promote items as well, but the writing tends to be completed in batches. The articles are submitted to directories or e-zines (electronic magazines) related to the product niche. The hope is that these articles create multiple back links to the website because the content is professionally written and drives the reader to visit the website and get more information. Articles like “Top 10 vitamins you should take every day” should drive customers to the vitamin website that sponsored the article.
Online publishing companies. Many freelance writers work with online publishing companies. That’s where I started. These publishing companies are essentially an article directory designed to make money from ad clicks. The ads that appear are related to the article. An authoritative article on vitamins might feature ads for the vitamin site. A reader clicks on the ad. The site owner pays the article directory owner a certain amount of money for every click or completed sale.
Product Reviews. Some websites are built as affiliate sites. The purpose is to drive visitors to go to a site and buy a product. The webmaster gets a commission from every sale. Freelance writers would be hired to do a product review in hopes to entice visitors to buy products. If the vitamin site were a site with affiliation to vitamins sold on another e-commerce website, the writer might do reviews for every type of vitamin brand sold and other associated products.
Editors. Freelance writers can also be hired as editors. They edit the webmaster’s content or content the webmaster outsourced. The editor’s responsibility is to ensure the content flows well and is internet ready in terms of keywords and phrasing.
Sales pages. Some webmasters use a sales page or squeeze page to drive sales. Freelance writers are hired to create the language for these pages. These are typically one page long with language that builds momentum towards the sale. The vitamin website webmaster might have a sales page that highlights how a lack of vitamins can cause certain deadly diseases. The page shows how these diseases affect people and their loved ones. Towards the end of the page you read about how the webmaster’s particular brand of vitamins can help stop those diseases.
I’ve participated in nearly the entire freelance writing job types listed above with both private clients and online publishing companies. My name doesn’t always appear in the by-line but that’s o.k. It’s the nature of the game. Sometimes it’s easier to be a ghostwriter for certain jobs that do not necessarily represent who you truly are as a writer. Maybe your area of expertise is real estate, but you’ve been hired to do product reviews of webcams for an affiliate marketer. You know enough about webcams, but you’re trying to promote yourself as a real estate expert. You may not want to have your byline on the reviews because someone could look your name up and associate your work as more about product reviews than real estate.
The Advantages of Freelance Writing
There are significant advantages of freelance writing that you won’t find in many other jobs. Most advantages can apply to any job where you work from home. You can make your own hours for the most part. You set your schedule because you pick your clients. You can write from almost anywhere. I’ve been paid to review restaurants and I’m taking notes as I bite into some of the most delicious meals ever. In my book, I interview a tax specialist and we explain how you can actually count that meal as a legal tax deduction.
Over time, you can actually have more freedom to do what’s needed in your life. If you plan to get back into your original career field’s workforce, you could select jobs that fit your expertise and build an online catalogue of your consulting work, so to speak. In your off-time, you could point this out to prospective employers.
Freelance writing online also beats other home jobs because you aren’t doing the same thing over and over like stuffing envelopes. You might get paid to craft content of a similar nature, but it’s not a repetitive motion. If you don’t like to deal with direct people interaction or customer service, freelance writing online is largely free of that.
My favorite advantage has been learning about a lot of different subjects. That has actually helped me save money in addition to getting paid for researching the topic and submitting articles for publication. There was a time when I wrote approximately 30 articles detailing how to take apart various washer and dryer models. When my own dryer started malfunctioning, I simply referenced my own paid research and fixed the problem myself rather than hire a professional appliance repairman. All I had to pay for was parts!
The Ugly Truth
As with almost every profession, there are disadvantages to freelance writing online. Healthcare is your own responsibility. There is no guaranteed work. Even though you set your own hours, a dry spell can entice you to working with clients that have high demands just because the pay is better.
You’ll also have to explain to your family and friends that, even though you are surfing the ‘net from home and typing up articles.
The tax structure is also different. You are essentially working for yourself, so you end up paying self-employment tax, which is typically higher than a regular income tax. My books’ tax expert gives great strategies on how to reduce what you pay.
The 7 Reasons
Despite the disadvantages, freelance writing online is still a hot job in dire need of qualified individuals. The seven reasons I list are actually seven skills that are lacking in the known freelance writing work force. As I said earlier, the landscape is changing towards more qualified individuals. Internet webmasters and entrepreneurs have tried to out-source work to an employee pool that has consistently turned up poor content even though they work for peanuts.
Even though you are new to this field, you don’t have to work for peanuts.
If you have these seven skills listed below, you can get paid infinitely more money than I’ll ever make as a content producer. You’ll get paid writing about what you know.
The big questions are “how do I do it?” and “can I do it?”
This free book exploring 7 reasons why you can become a freelance writer online will help you answer those questions. These are the reasons that helped me garner those accomplishments in the beginning without having any formal internet training on producing web content. It took me years to discover them and I’m still researching the finer points.
To be honest, there are some charlatan sites out there. They trick people into thinking they can just write anywhere and get paid. They tell you to pay a monthly fee to join a job search. They charge expensive fees for writing courses to get you started in the freelance writing world. I totally support getting paid for your knowledge- I consider myself an expert in the field and I have eBooks about freelance writing that I charge very little for.
But I don’t support taking advantage of those who are struggling and looking for a new career. I never paid for a course, never paid to do a job search, never had to join a multi-level marketing network and yet I was making up to $60 an hour as a freelance writer. I did this without an English or Journalism degree. I have proven that you can create a legitimate career writing from home if you have the right skill set and basic marketing ability.
Given my experience and connections to potential clients, here is the list of seven reasons why you can become a freelance writer online along with challenges and solutions to those challenges.
1. You Have Time Management Skills
If you were an efficiency machine at your old job, then you know the importance of time management skills. It goes beyond turning in work. It’s about turning in quality work in a timely manner and still having the focus to complete additional tasks or take care of personal business.
But now that you’re spending more time at home than before, the work realm of time management has shifted. Now you must learn to do it outside of an office where a supervisor or employer can walk in at any time.
Challenge: I’ve never been my own boss. Time management skills are natural in the workplace but not at home. I have a family and children.
Solution: Get everyone on board with yourself as the first person you must convince. The truth is that if you can do it at work, you can do it at home. The expectations are different but it’s essentially the same scenario. Instead of a boss or employer, you are facing a client.
If you don’t get something seemingly routine done today in the work place, you’ll still get paid by your boss to finish it tomorrow. At home as a freelance writer, not getting it done can mean a direct hit in the wallet. I’ve put off client assignments only to lose them to other writers just because I didn’t feel like finishing it that night. It didn’t Challenge my client because he still got his end of the bargain; I just didn’t get mine.
Once you convince yourself that you work for a new boss (you plus your client) and your time management has a more direct impact on your wallet, you’ve taken the right first step. The next one is to explain this to your family and work with them. Trust me, it’s not impossible. I managed to make $300 a week working 10 hours a week while juggling grad school, full time employment, church life, a wife and two kids. It took me a while to figure out how to do it. Once I did figure it out, managing time for freelance writing was easy.
It’s a matter of WHEN you do it and how you tell them that you aren’t mashing buttons on the computer for fun. You are doing “work.” I have additional tips and strategies in my book but one tip I’ll share is giving everyone a reason to buy in to it. It can be strange for a stay-at-home spouse to see you in the house, not helping out but employed-sort of.
Prioritize the times you promise to help out in exchange for a “no questions asked” time to do your work behind closed doors. Pick the home tasks you normally did on a regular work day and try to get them done sooner than expected. The time is there. You aren’t commuting any more. You don’t have a three-piece suit to get pressed. Sometimes you can skip that morning shower!
2. You Have A Fluid Schedule
This goes in line with time management, but there are some clients that will require a fluid schedule and multiple methods of communication. Some are based overseas. One of my clients was based in England so our time zone difference was 9 hours. My work lunch break was right before his bed time, so that’s when we did most of our communication.
Challenge: I am a night person/day person. I can barely type my name if I have to work during the day/night.
Solution: The only solution is to adjust and do any prep work to make the adjustment easier. I’m sure it’s still easier than a traditional work schedule where you didn’t have a choice but to be in a certain place at a certain time and not a minute over.
My England client did a lot of his work in the morning which was in the middle of my sleep period. So what I would do is complete outlines, drafts and summaries in my late afternoon period and submitted them by e-mail. He could review the results while I slept and when we met online during lunch we were on the same page for the next task.
The next client was on the opposite coast of me, so we had a more common time zone to work with. My afternoons were his right before bed time hours, so we met somewhere in the middle and could discuss at length any necessary changes.
3. You Can Speak And Write In Native English
In your high school years did you ever know someone who received a lower grade in English than in a foreign language class? It seems laughable, but there are some complex rules to the English language. Native English speakers, however, understand these rules unconsciously. So when they read web content that’s technically in English but seems garbled and nonsensical, they’ll leave the website immediately. That’s a lost potential sale not based on quality of product but quality of presentation.
It’s a good thing that you are a Native English speaker and hopefully writer. You can spot the difference between “please visiting my website today to receive deals amazing to you” and “visit my website and get amazing deals”. Would you believe that when I explored submitting my e-book for review I found sites that had content phrased in a similar way? I knew right then and there I couldn’t trust any review they gave because they weren’t reviewing their front pages.
Challenge: I know how to speak clear English but I’m not sure if I can write it.
Solution: If you can tell when English is bad, then you know when it’s good. Maybe it’ll take you a little while to re-learn those grammar rules but the internet community isn’t looking for scholar English students. Most minimum requirements for the demographic target are eighth grade level, so writing a level or two above that gives an authoritative sense without going overboard. It’s just a matter of confidence.
What you’ll find is that you can’t just fill your articles with search engine-driven phrases and language or else you’ll lose the audience you are writing for in the first place: the customer. That’s the challenge I enjoyed with writing for one of my clients. They wanted “How To” articles for complex tasks written in layman’s terms so that people would return to the site for additional advice. My beginning paragraphs needed to include search engine-friendly terms but then finally boil down to understandable steps.
One of them was an old student of mine from my military instructor days. He remembered that I used to spill red ink over his papers. Now he is an internet marketing guru and needed my skills to help create marketing articles. His products focused on black hair care products. He would give me the baseline for each article and asked me to write them in the product developer’s voice. You can’t just hire any English speaker to do that job.
4. You Are An Expert
When I started freelance writing online in 2006, clients wanted anyone that could type. They weren’t as concerned with legitimate subject matter experts as they were with presenting the image of one because search engines weren’t able to tell the difference. They only saw keywords, which attracted ads or business, which generated money. Five years later, search engines like Google have rooted out those sites and the only ones left standing are sites that have great, legitimate content.
Webmasters and owners now want experts to produce the content, no matter the field. That’s why your area of expertise, no matter what it is in, can be needed.
Challenge: You don’t think you have a particular area of expertise. You know a lot about stuff and subjects, but you don’t have the credentials to back it up.
Solution: You ARE an expert, you just don’t know it. Consider your passions, hobbies and anything else you spend significant time with. Someone will pay you to write about it.
Like I said, I started in 2006 when experts weren’t needed. However, I could write about almost any subject, given the time to do research because I am quite the Google surfer. I wasn’t hired by clients because I spent 10 years in the military, had an undergrad degree and military training certificates.
I was hired because I could write. And some of the topics they needed, I just happened to know a lot about. Like the musician, Prince. I am a huge Prince fan. One client needed five articles about Prince’s music and paid me $15 up front for each one plus residuals, which I still get today.
My undergrad degree and my almost completed Master’s degree in psychology have not netted me a job in the field yet. But I still have made money writing because of those degrees. One of the clients I work with, Examiner, hired me as a San Francisco Mental Health expert because I am able to do the research and give a valid opinion on mental health-related news topics. This is one of my actual areas of expertise and one of the fields I will continue to write in now that I’m moving out of the general content producing arena.
Examiner is a great place to test the waters of writing in an area of expertise. They accept experts for nearly every topic and subject, provided you can demonstrate the writing chops. And if your area isn’t listed, just submit one.
5. You Can Navigate The Web
If you’ve found this free document, you have demonstrated some ability to navigate the web. And believe me, getting this far is sometimes the minimum of what is needed to be an accomplished freelance writer. If you are a career professional, you know all too well the value of surfing the web quickly. Some of the professional job seminars I participated in reported that companies would use web surfing skills as an employment qualifier.
It would be part of a skills test in addition to typing. While there may not be a direct skills test with online clients, the ability to navigate the web quickly helps you produce content faster.
Challenge: Even though you are a subject matter expert, you don’t know Google from Gaggle.
Solution: Practice, practice and practice searching on multiple search engines. And don’t get frustrated if you can’t find something quickly. One way to practice is to do searches on the subject matter you have an expertise in, click on the first 10 results, and rate their legitimacy in authority.
Let’s say your subject matter expertise is in real estate property sales for Destin, Florida. You want to know what condo properties are available. What would you type in the Google search box? Probably “condos for sale Destin, Florida” or “Condos Destin”. What would make the first 10 sites legitimate ones that meet your search requirement?
1. The home page has up to date information. You would know because you are the expert in Destin real estate.
2. You can easily navigate and find condos specific to your search. The results are legitimate and not just fake leads to up-sell into another program or more expensive properties you have no interest in.
3. The site is free of serious grammar or spelling issues.
4. Contact info is relevant.
Whatever information wrong or missing in those sites is most likely what you can provide the solution to as an expert. The more you practice, the quicker you can discern the good from the bad. Your client wants his website to be THE top site for search results in that field.
6. You Can Adapt to the Internet
Reading this free e-book is a sign that you can adapt. Instead of sitting around waiting for jobs to find you based on your education or expertise, you are going to look for them. When traditional brick and mortar employers can’t afford you more hours or any type of job, you’ve looked online.
And with a reduced income, there’s no doubt you’ve found ways to gather necessary resources for your new, albeit temporarily inconvenient, lifestyle. Your meal choices are different. Health care is more self-care. Some luxuries have fallen by the wayside in favor of necessities.
Yet it isn’t over for you. For starters, you’ve found a way to get online or get the information online on exploring new ways to work.
Challenge: Not knowing enough about the internet to keep up.
Solution: Self-education and exploration online every day. I was not a subject matter expert on internet marketing and I still don’t consider myself one. But I knew that if I wanted to continue my freelance writing online work, I would need to know what my clients were concerned with besides getting quality content from me. So I went to their homes. Not their physical homes but virtual ones. I looked up terms like “SEO”, “keywords”, “SERP”, “CTR, “PPC”.
These terms were nearly foreign to me but they were ever-important to clients because it’s how they made money. And the more the internet landscape changed with requirements and start-up competitors, the more they demanded of me to understand the language. So begin at the beginning and look up the definition of each term you come across that you don’t understand.
Visit places like The Warrior Forum and read what people are posting there because that’s where a lot of internet marketers hang out to discuss the trade. That forum has provided me priceless knowledge about what clients want and why they want it. I’ve practically earned a degree in Internet Marketing just from reading posts and tips from other experts in the field. It’s like learning Spanish by hanging out in Spain right after you ace your high school Spanish classes. The more time you spend there, the quicker you’ll pick up the language and prepare for the next internet sea change.
Adaptation goes beyond internet language. Cultural differences and tone will affect your writing style as well. Having the patience to adapt and write a little bit out of the box can translate into big money. It can make you an instant expert, too. One of my clients needed 12 documents on a specific trade school in England. I knew jack diddly about their training systems beforehand but now I know enough to get by should I ever move to the United Kingdom and need to research employment opportunities. It was fun compiling information and articles because I had to use English spelling and phrases for authenticity. I educated myself by visiting related forums that were frequented by the UK population. I even befriended a few regulars who helped me do research for the articles based on their personal experiences.
7. You Can Type and You Have Grammar Skills
This is still a highly-regarded skill for content producers. Gone are the days of hunt-and-peck for words. It doesn’t matter how much information you know about your area of expertise. If you can’t get it out on paper or a word document fast enough, it’s a long, frustrating ride for both you and the client.
The only obvious problem is that you can’t type or you are a slow typist. The only obvious solution to being a slow typist is to practice and brush up on your typing skills. I explain this further in my book but try out some programs like Free Typing Game. Keep training yourself until you can do at least 45 words per minute.
That’s a good target goal for efficient content production. Most clients want a 400 to 500 word article for web content. 45 words per minute for 1000 words is roughly 20 minutes of typing. If the other 40 minutes is for reviewing, corrections, editing, researching and sending off your documents, you’ve completed two assignments in an hour. Even at a minimum rate of $5 per 400 to 500 words, that’s $10 an hour. And you’ll find in my book how you end up, over time, getting three and four of these assignments done in an hour.
There are even solutions for people who have physical typing limitations. Programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking that translate audio into documents.
Good grammar skills are definitely hard to come by in the internet world. Some webmasters may argue that sales have little to do with grammatically correct content as it is presented on their home pages. That may be true for some products, but today’s tougher economy is causing a more discerning eye to view these pages. The competition has ramped up so how will their pages stand out above the others? If a marketer wants to siphon off sales from large online stores, they need content that at least looks like it was written by a major online store’s content staff.
Basic grammar skills then become a premium. You don’t need to sign up for high-school equivalent English classes to get them back. I recommend reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves to jumpstart those grammar rules. In the end you’ll still tailor to your client’s wishes. It’s just much easier to tailor when you have all the material to work with.
One of my clients hired me based on something he saw me post in a marketing forum. Someone wanted their website critiqued for structure. Everyone who responded commented on the color scheme, font, video loading time and other such structural pieces. I was the only one that mentioned the grammatical errors on the page.
Plant Your Internet Roots
Something to consider before you explore the freelance writing online career is to create your own online profile. If you are a career professional, I highly recommend making a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn’s free profile lets your create a virtual resume so that anyone can look up your name and see your experience. If you are that Florida Real Estate agent and someone reads one of your brilliant real estate articles in a directory, they might ask “who IS that guy?” They can find you on LinkedIn and see your real estate resume. Your demonstrated writing skills and listed experience could land you into a consulting job for a private client or back in the game all together.
If you have a personal Facebook page, create a fan page for your writing services. It can serve much like a LinkedIn profile but on a more social level. Many forums allow you to list your Facebook page in the profile section. List this page in your profile so that when you demonstrate your expertise in forum posts, people can look you up without delving into your online personal life.
Twitter is also a great place to get online and promote yourself. I have multiple Twitter accounts for my multiple markets. Each one has its own types of followers and my tweets always stay on the market’s topic.
Are You Ready?
So are you ready to be a freelance writer online? Based on those 7 reasons, do you think you can take it on as a full time or part time career?
Don’t be intimidated if you don’t have all 7 skills mastered. I didn’t, and I was pretty successful because I was willing to learn and practice.
My start was actually in the mid 1990s. I wasn’t a Journalism major but I loved to write and was hired as an entertainment editor for my college paper. I got a chance to interview various traveling musicians and stand up comedians who made their money by hitting the campus circuit.
When I left school I spent a year hanging out in a beach town and working at a hotel. During my spare time I still had the writing bug so I applied to work for the local music magazine and once again I was hired. I wrote and interviewed bands passing through town as well as local businesses.
Fast forward 15 years later and I’m in the military. I’ve traveled the world and had been stationed at some great places. One of my college buddies e-mails me and says she found this website that pays you to write about what you know. She remembered my college paper days and thought I’d be a good fit. So I started dabbling with the site and found myself getting paid an extra $50 to $100 a week writing for fun. I reviewed bands, reviewed restaurants, gave advice on how to prepare for the military…you name it.
When I left the military I found that my civilian job wasn’t quite paying the bills. I had some debt to clear up before the creditors would start putting a serious dent in my score. I was also going to grad school and supporting a family of four. I needed to find something else to do that would help out. Instead of getting a McJob, I went back to writing more and more. I found another website that was paying even higher than the first one. I applied and was accepted. It took me three months to figure out how to balance the schedule, but I developed a system that balanced all the elements. I was averaging $300 a week on 10 hours of work. Pretty soon I branched out to private clients. The debt was all but eliminated.
Now I’m at a point where I can focus on school and work on my own projects. I now have the freedom I want, thanks to freelance writing online.
Are you ready to be a freelance writer online? Do you still have more questions? No problem! You can e-mail me at psevbrite@gmail.com with any questions.
Or you can visit my blog, Writing Jobs From Home for more free tips.
Or if you’re ready to read a comprehensive, detailed guide on what it takes to really get your foot in the door, check out my book Write Your Life: The Beginner’s Guide To Freelance Writing Online on Smashwords for your Nook or other e-readers. My book will give you more insight into the freelance writing online world. I’ll tell you how to keep your tax burden down, where the best clients can be found, and how to establish the perfect work environment for maximum writing efficiency. This will give a head start against this viable market that’s about to have its floodgates opened.
I hope you enjoyed this free product. Good luck out there!
http://www.writingjobshome.com