FREELANCE WRITING AS A CAREER :
Prior to starting the topic, it is essential to understand exactly what is a freelancer. A freelancer is a self-employed person. He offers his services to various clients at the same point of time. Freelancer has the privilege to do different types of work for various clients as per their requirement. Almost in every field of business, services could be provided by freelancers. There is a bright career as a freelancer almost in every aspect of the business. In this series, freelance writing as a career is one of the best options available in today’s scenario.
Freelancer is just assigned the work with certain specifications and time limitation as per the requirement of the client. Hence this becomes the entire responsibility of the freelancer to complete the work in his own way. In other words, a freelancer is just like an independent contractor having his own controls.
WHAT IS FREELANCE WRITING :
At a glance, sometimes, you have quite a rosy picture of freelance writing. You think there is a lot of content available in the market. You have an imagination that as a freelancer, you are sitting beside the lake and writing and making a lot of money. If you have this kind of approach towards freelance writing, you are in the wrong direction of imaginations. As a matter of fact, freelance writing involves a lot of efforts and proper concentration, especially at initial levels, if you really want to mint money out of this.
Freelance writing is one of the ways to make a career in the writing field. This is the practice of writing against money. Freelance writing is to write the text as per the client’s requirement. This requires a lot of concentration and efforts, especially at initial levels. The clients may vary from various industries. This is entirely his choice whether he writes for the same client throughout the year or he writes for different clients.
WHAT IS A FREELANCE WRITER :
A freelance writer is a person who writes the text against money for different people as per their need. Most of the times, he works from his home and writes. In some cases, the client wants him to write while sitting on his premises. Freelance writers compose as per the requirement or expectation of the client. In most of the cases, freelance writers become specialist in one particular field or subject such as culture, politics, academics, writing resumes or any other field.
Sometimes, freelance writers are also business owners. More or less besides writing, they work as marketers also as they market themselves to the potential clients.
HOW TO START :
Writing is something more about your passion. If you are passionate about writing, you may choose this as a profession as writing is something that comes from within. If you have truly identified your passion and decided to become a freelance writer, then the next question mark is how to start the work.
You may start this with cold pitching. First of all, you need to identify the kind of business you want to approach. Cold pitching happens when you contact various people such as entrepreneurs, startups, companies or bloggers, and introduce yourself to them. You have to let them know how you can be of great help to them as a freelance writer in growing their business.
START A BLOG:
One of the best ways to showcase your skills as well as to learn quickly is to start a blog. Good thing for you, starting a blog costs absolutely nothing. Head to blogger.com or wordpress.com to start a free blog. Once you have written a few good posts, you can present them to potential clients.
LEARN SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION)
You need to keep in mind that today’s online writing includes a good hang of SEO (search engine optimization). There are tonnes of tutorials on YouTube that can give you more than what you need to regarding the SEO. Almost all clients today require a writer who can not only write some good content but can also write SEO friendly content. Writing as a career will require you to work like a pro when it comes to SEO. WordPress allows you to write SEO friendly content once you buy your own domain which only costs you a couple of bucks. In India, you buy a domain for only 99 rupees and hosting for around 1000.
THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE WAYS TO PURSUE WRITING AS A CAREER:
To pursue writing as a career, you do not necessarily have to find work out there. If you a solid idea and content for your own blog, you can reach millions of people with good SEO. Put Adsense on your blog and start earning ad revenues from Google. Not just Adsense, you can then become an affiliate marketer for companies like Amazon, Flipkart, etc and get commissions for making a sale through your blog. You can also offer expert services to the companies according to the niche of your blog. The good thing is, you can charge hefty sums for rendering a service to a big company.
Comment below if you want to understand more about Affiliate marketing, how to get started, and how to sell big-ticket items to corporates through your blog. We will publish a new post if you want.
HOW DO FREELANCERS GET WORK :
There are a few ways to get the work as a freelance writer. One of the best ways is to find the work on the internet. A simple search for the jobs of freelance writers on the internet shows a lot of opportunities. Sometimes, the person or the organization that requires some written content advertises for the freelance writers. Besides, networking is another best way to find this job.
Moreover, you may send emails to various people and companies related to your niche. Furthermore, make a good pitch for you with magical words. Besides, you may create a linked in account and an amazing profile.
CHALLENGES OF FREELANCE WRITING AND SOLUTIONS :
Every profession has its own pros and cons. While freelance writing has its own advantages, the profession is equally equipped with a lot of challenges. Although, every problem, every challenge crops up with the hidden solution. Same way, this profession has also its own various challenges. As a matter of fact, any profession or any task is boring and monotonous unless it has some challenges. Prior to going in for this career, this is very important to be well aware of the challenges and solutions of the profession as well.
FINDING A CLIENT:
The biggest challenge of freelance writing is to find the clients. As a matter of fact, finding a customer is the challenge for every kind of profession in today’s competitive world. In spite of the fact that there is neck to neck competition in this particular field, we may realize that if we follow the right approach, there is much lesser competition.The best solution to overcome this challenge is to create own blog and writing the best of articles on it. Even you may create your page promoting your blogs. To be independent in writing is far better than being dependant on other popular portals.
MENTAL BLOCK:
The most common challenge of this profession happens when the writer gets mentally blocked. Either he is at a loss to know what and how to write and from where to start or he is not in the right tone of the mood. The persistence of this kind of mental stage leads to the poor consequences and affects the writer’s writing abilities adversely.When you are grabbed with this kind of mental situation, you need to take some rest and stop writing for the time being. The frame of mind needs to be changed immediately bu indulging in some interesting activities. Besides, maximum reading should be done as unless you consume something, how it shall come out. Taking exercise is another means of getting into mental relief.
TIME:
Another major challenge for a freelance writer is that of time. You always feel as if you are much short of time as you have to write so many blogs for various people or companies. Apart from this, you have to carry out a lot of other tasks also.When somebody approaches for work, we feel that we should grab all the works irrespective of we shall be able to do this or not for some or the other reason. Ultimately this leads to the shortage of time. Don’t you feel that the best work should be selected, rather than taking all the jobs? Another good solution to handle this problem is that we may outsource somebody to share our workload.
GETTING IDEAS :
Initially, freelancer feels that he has plenty of ideas about most of the topics. By the time, you feel that you need more and more new ideas to create better blogs. As a matter of fact, lack of ideas is a great challenge for this profession.The best way to overcome this challenge is to go through the maximum books, articles. Read more and more, as much as u can. At the same time, spend maximum time with the people for whom you are writing as discussion with them certainly leads to generate new ideas and enhance knowledge. Going through various blogs also helps a lot in this.
TOO MUCH COMPETITION :
Tough competition prevails in the market almost in every field in today’s highly competitive scenario. Same is the case in freelance writing also. The height of competition is that people are ready to offer much lesser rates than the market rates.If we look at the competition the other way, it looks like an opportunity to enhance the earnings. More competition gives the chance to prove your worth in a better way if you are truly a competent writer. Work on improving your quality and accordingly, distinguish yourself from the others. Highlight your skills and increase your value and rates. Let the people feel the difference, they will automatically divert to you even at higher rates.UNPREDICTABLE WORKLOAD :
The workload is quite unpredictable in this profession. Sometimes you are flooded with the work. Sometimes, you are striving to get more work. This is a common phenomenon of this profession.
As a freelancer, you should be a better budget planner and keep necessary arrangements for tough times. As such, this situation is a part and parcel of every kind of business or professionDEADLINES:
Adherence to the deadlines is the most important feature of any freelance writer. To become a successful writer, meeting deadlines is a must. At the same time, the quality of the content is very important. To meet this challenge, the freelance writer has to work with full dedication and in a planned way. Priority of work has to be set and commitments should be fulfilled.
BAD CLIENTS:
While dealing with the variety of people, you come across some good as well as some bad clients. Good clients are very easy to deal with. But it is truly a tough challenge to deal with a bad client because we can’t afford to lose even a single client in today’s competitive age. Bad clients try to play smartly with you. Sometimes, they won’t approve the content deliberately. Sometimes, they would hold your payment for nothing.
Freelancer needs to handle such clients smartly and carefully. He should set the terms and conditions with such clients on paper. Timely follow up for the payment needs to be done with such clients in a polite manner.
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING IF YOU’RE SERIOUS ABOUT WRITING AS A CAREER?
Writing is a skill and every skill needs sharpening from time to time. As a freelance writer, it becomes entirely your own responsibility to analyze your skills and sharpen them. One of the best ways to get better at writing is to improve and increase your research work. Spend maximum time in researching as this is the only tool available to update your knowledge. Unless you have the complete knowledge of the subject, what will you write? Besides researching, taking feedback is another best way to get better at writing. Try to listen to the criticism and accept the criticism quite gracefully in the right spirit. At the same time, while writing the content, source of the information must be cited.
CONCLUSION:
In the conclusion, we may say that freelance writing as a career is truly one of the best career options if you really want to work in your own style as per your conveniences. As every field has pros and cons, this career has also its own pros and cons, challenges. In spite of all this, there are a lot of opportunities in this profession.
In the end, you just have to have a knack for writing and learning simultaneously to pursue writing as a career.
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