Freelance Writer’s Guide

As there is great increase in demand of online writers countless people are willing to start their career as a freelance writer but they never realize that there are a lot of things rather than just writing. In addition to writing you must know several things about career as writer. Mostly people dream that online writing job is just blog writing or article re-writing. It is essential for every kind of writers to know about what is writing and for what kind of writing you are fit. Now competition for freelance writers is intense, it may take massive work to be a successful writer. If you are wondering how to start freelance writing and how to become a successful freelancer, in underneath article you will learn basics of writing career that you must know before starting career as freelancer writer.

Different types of Writing

Article or SEO Writing

Most demanding field of writers is online content writing. Online Content writing jobs involve writing web sides content mostly in paragraph styles and with a word limit. Usually web content refer to a certain product, feature or practice and is most commonly used for marketing techniques. Article and SEO writing is the introduction of keywords in the article which are targeted to optimize. In this type of writing you must have to care the density of used keyword. Your writing material must be SEO friendly and traffic generating. The main purpose of article writing is converting traffic from reader to buyer.

Legal and Business writing

Demand for legal and business writing is on its peak from last few years. It is quite difficult to find some awesome business and legal writers. Although freelancing business overcome these difficulties but still there is great shortage of legal writers. These jobs cover all sorts of legal and business related agreements to be written for online and offline purposes.

Advertisement and Magazine

The most popular freelance writing categories are advertisement and magazine writing. This kind of writing is probably most expensive as advertisement and magazine writing involves creativity in their writing style. However there are few people who do this kind of writing because it is most difficult type of writing and writers with natural ability of creativity are successful in this field.

Journalism and Column writing

Journalism and Column writing jobs are readily obtainable and highly paid. The main requirement is writing content for newspapers and news websites. This kind of writing requires professional courses, because there are several tricks and techniques to write. Usually students of mass communication choose this category as their career.

Blog Writing

This is a rather personal writing category where freelance writers produce stuff about themselves or their own products, and sell them off.

Above are the basic categories of writing you may select one or more for freelance writing but it is better to select one category and be strict with your selected category this make you specialist of your work. Now you have to know some tips to start freelance writing.

Never afraid from competition

As you know that every career have a lot of competition in the field and competition will increase as more and more people see it as a good way to earn an extra income. Although competition in every field is a fact of life but you shouldn’t be afraid of it, be ready for it and do everything you can for quality work. Only one thing which can give you an edge on your competitors is quality work.

Right Kind of Work

Due to high competition it becomes more difficult to find the right kind of job. This is the biggest problem mostly freelancer writers face in their career no matter they are well experienced with awesome portfolio. Find right kind of work is common problem of writers. Right kind of work is not limited only for categories it also includes decent paying jobs that make freelance writing worth doing.

Quality Work

As we discussed above that quality is only one thing which can give you an edge in competition, so quality counts, try to reduce mistakes, you will stand or fall in the freelance writing field by the quality. If you are providing high quality it is guarantee of repeated orders. People who are advertising for articles, E-books or reports want quality work and they know quality when they see it. There are several writers from third world country which are very cheap but their writing standards are very low. So produce quality work all the time and your reputation will soon grow along with your ability to demand more pay for your work.

Marketing Skills

If you are working as freelancer, you are doing business now and marketing is very important for any business. You need to market yourself. You may be best writer in the world but if no one knows about you, you will never get work. You have to work with modern marketing techniques. The writers with excellent marketing skills will always get more and profitable work.

A Blog

In above lines you have red that marketing skills are essential for successful businessman, in this regard you need a blog or some kind of portfolio or you can say a showcase of your work. It’s an excellent way to market yourself; you are giving example of your work. Blogs are easiest way to show examples because it is very easy to maintain.

Ability to Network

No matter you are a web developers or designer or writer, online business depends on your network. You have to establish a sound network of different clients for flow of work. Your blog is best way to build network but you have to do some other things like, if you get good work from clients don’t just do the work and forget about it. You have to contact the client after asking if the work was ok, build a relationship with the customer. It’s easier to get repeat work from a satisfied customer than to get work from cold. Try to visit writing forums, internet marketing forums, and business forums. Internet marketers are always on the lookout for good writers. Ability to build network will help you in marketing yourself

Keeping all these points in mind you may have a good strategy that will put you way ahead of most of your competitors. Many people think that all you have to do to succeed as a freelance writer is to write. This couldn’t be further from the truth, marketing yourself is equally important.