Freelance Writing

Three Stages Of Your Freelance Writing Career

Posted by Chris on in Freelance Writing, Tips 0 Comment
freelance writing career

While it is possible to become an instant success after writing your first few pieces, chances are its going to take some time for you to hit your stride and gain a steady roster of clients. If your experience is similar to mine, you’ll progress through three distinct phases during your freelance writing career. Here’s an outline of those three stages.

1. I’m making what I can!

This could be defined as your “I’ll Write Anything!” phase.

You need to make money so you take any job available to you even if it means you aren’t really making all that much money at it. We’ve all been there as its tough trying to get a reputation in the business. A large number of job boards and forums have a rating system so if you are willing to undercut your competitors and make very little in order to get those first jobs under your belt and get positive feedback. Continue reading “Three Stages Of Your Freelance Writing Career” →

The Disadvantages Of Job Boards

Posted by Chris on in Freelance Writing, Tips 0 Comment
image courtesy of renjith krishnan and Free Digital Photos
image courtesy of renjith krishnan and Free Digital Photos

I’ve been talking to a lot of freelance writers over the last few months as I work on some information products I plan to launch in the near future. One of the most hotly contested topics that has been brought up during these discussions are the advantages and disadvantages of job boards. There seems to be an even split of those who absolutely love sites such as oDesk and Freelancer to source new writing gigs while others avoid them like the plague.

The advantages of these services are easily recognizable; a large number of potential clients and projects to bid on, most handle escrow payments, a feedback system to rate both freelancers and clients, etc. What might not be as apparent to newcomers are the disadvantages to using job boards to attract new clients. I wanted to outline a few of the items that I found to be rather discouraging for those that may be looking at using them in the near future to secure some online writing jobs.

Continue reading “The Disadvantages Of Job Boards” →

Redefining what I do – I’m an Internet Guy

Posted by Chris on in Business, Freelance Writing, Personal 0 Comment

I always struggle when it comes time to craft a response to the common question “So, what do you do for a living?” In reality I have a number of things on the go at any given time including site development, working with my various customers on a freelance basis, running my copyright enforcement business, working on an upcoming eBook and maintaining my network of affiliate blogs. To answer the question with complete honesty I would probably need a half hour to explain each of the different things that I do but instead I always fall back to an easy and familiar answer.

“I’m a freelance writer.”

There are a number of reasons for this. It’s not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed about the true answer because I’m actually quite proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish. While it was a struggle starting out, things have improved to the point where I’m comfortable in what I’m doing, have been able to hire a couple virtual assistants to help out and working on some new projects that I’m very excited about. Continue reading “Redefining what I do – I’m an Internet Guy” →

Stay away from freelance writers offering semi-exclusive content

Posted by Chris on in Freelance Writing 0 Comment

I was recently talking to a customer about why their gold investment website wasn’t attracting any traffic whatsoever. This wasn’t a matter of only a few visitors trickling in but rather a case where the site had zero traffic. After reviewing the blog posts, I decided to do a quick search to see if he was using duplicate content. As it turns out, I opened up a whole can of worms about this particular project that I thought I would share with readers of the blog as it ended up being a very valuable lesson for both the client and myself. Continue reading “Stay away from freelance writers offering semi-exclusive content” →