If you have a flair or passion for writing, you may consider turning such a skill into a freelance career. Freelancing is one of the ways to generate income for yourself through your writing skills. It allows for flexibility but requires self-motivation and discipline for you to thrive.
If you’re ready to transform your passion into a profession, here are some steps to guide you through your journey into freelance writing.
Develop an Area of Specialty
To be successful in your freelance career, you must choose a writing niche. This entails choosing an area in which you have an interest and expertise. You could either select a field where you have a degree or professional certification in. Choosing an area of specialty boosts your writing ability, makes you stand out in your field, and ensures a higher pay rate. You can focus on business-to-business (B2B) writing, copywriting, technical writing, newsletter writing, etc. Also, as a freelance writer, you can choose to focus on niches such as games, travel and hospitality, pets, medicine, etc.
Create a Portfolio
Building a quality and strong portfolio helps you display your writing prowess to potential clients and organizations that would likely pick interest in your work. It may include published articles, blog posts, poems and short stories on literary magazines, etc. You can also compile samples of your writing in a professional website which would be included in your résumé/CV. Additionally, having an optimized LinkedIn profile and a good social media presence is a boost to your freelance writing career. They are also great platforms for landing writing gigs.
Create Networks
As a freelance writer, it is very important to have a good network of friends, colleagues, and writing communities. Research shows that a large percentage of jobs are gotten through connections. Therefore, endeavour to always share your work with friends so that they can know what you do and could easily recommend you. Reach out to colleagues who are into freelance writing who can refer you to clients or share their jobs with you if they have much on their table. Again, joining a community of freelance writers and engaging with them may avail you the opportunity of getting jobs.
Get Registered on Freelancing Platforms
You could land writing gigs on freelance platforms such as Medium, Freelancer, Upwork, Contently, Wordgigs, Fiverr, etc. These platforms save freelancers the stress of searching endlessly for jobs. Most of them allow you to bid prices with potential clients, offer feedback, and handle disputes or settle payment issues with problematic clients. However, getting gigs on any of such platforms will require that you build a solid portfolio on their site.
Learn Effective Business Skills
Freelancing makes you an entrepreneur. Hence, you need to develop the necessary entrepreneurial skills to ensure the success of your craft. Having good managerial skill, customer service skill, and time management skills will enable you thrive in your writing business and also help you retain clients. Setting necessary boundaries and reasonable price rates are key principles to enhancing the growth of any business. As a freelance writer, vital values such as passion, dedication, and commitment must be in place to ensure the continuity of your career.
Learning and Re-learning
To be successful as a freelance writer, you must endeavour to learn and relearn. Ensure to make concrete effort to improve your writing skills. Make constant research, read widely, be creative, and get updated with new writing conventions. This would enable you to stand out in your field and attract huge gigs.
Conclusion
Moving from being a writing enthusiast to a paid writer requires a whole lot of commitment, hard work, resilience, and dedication. Nevertheless, you can become successful in your writing career by having the right connections, creating a vibrant portfolio, and improving your writing skills. All you need is to take the right steps and you’ll be at the top of your career.