Becoming a Self-Employed Freelance Writer

The internet has no shortage of freelance writers aiming to earn a consistent stream of income online, and it is unsurprising that fewer see success than failure. Much of this has little to do with the writing ability of those seeking self-employment, and much of the outcome being entirely dependent on the business strategy that the writer chooses. It is all too easy to bid for job opportunities—for which one is qualified—and still not have a successful proposal for a period of weeks or even months.

The first tip for aspiring freelance writers is to smart small. The initial goal that one should be chasing is to build up some credibility by taking on any job experiences that you possibly can. Once you have become an established writer, than you can debate internally as to which jobs are most befitting a writer of your caliber, but initially writers must suck up their pride and write anything.

This means that for freelancers in the first stages of career should be much more focused on quantity of jobs that they complete than anything else. Of course, this does not mean that quality can be neglected—of course not! You must always write your best if you have the slightest interest in moving up to the next level; rather, one’s initial priority is to have as many 5-star ratings as you can possible muster. After you have successfully completed a number of short-terms jobs, then you can begin bidding confidently for longer term positions which generally are awarded exclusively to experienced writers. This is a maxim that remains true whether we are dealing with Real Writing Jobs or any other freelance writing.

Another important piece of advice for those seeking a sustainable salary online is to initially not limit oneself to a particular niche. Remember, the most important aspect to your profile right now is a steady stream of satisfied customers, and those reviews are much more significant than the actual work you completed for them. After you have achieved some modest success in building up experience, then you should aim to define one niche which you seek to dominate. In the long run, being perceived as an authority on a localized type of work will lead to the greatest paycheck, but as a beginning freelancer it is far more important to simply increase the number of jobs you have completed.

It goes without saying that each proposal must be formulated uniquely towards the writing job that you are seeking. It shows your potential client that you are sincerely interested in putting in a dedicated effort towards completing the task, and that you are not simply trying to carelessly pick up more job opportunities. Address each potential client personally, and articulate with clarity why you are the best choice for them. It is highly unlikely that you will be the only writer bidding for a stab at this writing project, and it’s important to keep that in mind when you take the time to write a proposal.

Another useful tip which is important for freelancers to be mindful of is that it will always be simpler to snag writing jobs that were posted most recently. This is intuitive, because there will be fewer proposals on these jobs and your proposal is more likely to be noticed by the poster. Moreover, if you read each post carefully you will notice that there are many jobs in which the timing element is crucial and the client is looking to have the job completed as soon as possible. In circumstances like these, it is probable that you will be hired even as an inexperienced freelancer since the client is interested in speed more than any other factor.

RealWritingJobs.com Reviewed: A Freelancing Dream

Freelancing online is an attractive option for many writers who are seeking self-employment—I personally began the switch from internet marketing to freelance writing relatively recently, and it has been a challenging and fulfilling path. Freelance writing is a career in which the most difficult part is in the very beginning, because this is when you are struggling to establish yourself before you have built up a portfolio or have customer reviews. You will be up against more experienced writers who can point towards their years of success, and naturally employers will gravitate towards them since they have already proven themselves.

That has been the most difficult part about settling into Elance, and also what I find most rewarding about the opportunities available at RealWritingJobs.com. This website is geared towards those interested in freelance writing but have minimal experience to prove their valid credentials. It means that the positions available will not be as lucrative as those on a more established site, but those will be out of reach for someone without considerable experience anyway.

In order to get into the game of freelance writing, there is only one thing that matters: your portfolio. This consists of all of the writing that you have done for clients, so that prospective employers are able to see exactly what you are capable of. Ultimately, this matters far more than any internship or job experience, and definitely more than any college degree. When starting out, I would advise taking work from any and every client—even if you think the pay is unsatisfactory and you truly deserve a higher payout—because this is the only way that you will move up in the world of freelance writing.

As much as it is unfortunate that aspiring freelance writers have to put money upfront in order to gain entry to RealWritingJobs.com, that is the nature of the business today. Insist on not paying this type of membership fee, and it is unlikely that you will ever have paid clients to do work for. This is the rite of passage and how someone interested in writing for a living gets their foot into the door.

Many of the more lucrative positions at RealWritingJobs.com are not necessarily in content writing or academic writing, but in copywriting. I would recommend trying to gain as much experience in copywriting as early as possible, because this will undoubtedly pay dividends in the long run. Initially, it is likely that you will be limited to writing simple articles until you solidify your reputation and credentials, and then you should take a stab at copywriting if you feel the potential to write persuasively. 

I would also recommend taking skills tests online—especially if you are a wannabe freelance writer who lacks a compelling portfolio—since this will help solidify your credentials in your early stages. For example, Elance offers a whole set of skills tests based on various different tasks common in work freelanced to writers and translators, and I would strongly advise checking it out.

Setting your own hours and working for yourself is the most convenient part of being a freelance writer, but it is also extremely hard work. Because the hours are unstable and I am working from the privacy of my own home, I often find myself working into the middle of the night when I feel pressured to hand in a project on time. This is not a niche that I would recommend for everyone, and if you do not handle stress well then it might be too much for you.

Still, in the end of the day, I feel mostly grateful to have the opportunity to have gained employment through RealWritingJobs.com as a copywriter. For me, the greatest benefit has been the ability to write from wherever I currently find myself that has internet access, so I look forward to being able to travel and work on the go! Eventually, I think I’ll move away from freelancing and take a stable job in an office like everyone else, but for the time being it’s a blessing. To learn more about the types of writing positions available, explore more here. Ultimately, freelance writing can be a sustainable method of earning money online while also engaged in stimulating work.

From Internet Marketing to Freelance Writing

Internet marketing has proven to be an efficient path towards self-employment on the internet, but it did not exist without its fair share of problems. More than anything else, I was disturbed by some of the ethical gray areas that exist in the make money online niche that left me with a deeply unsettling feeling whenever I had finished a blog post. At their core, I knew that the majority of internet marketing products were exploiting people who were desperately unemployed, and that very few of them were actually able to live up to the promises on their sales page.

Beyond this, it was becoming clear that the make money online niche is perhaps the most saturated area within internet marketing, as every aspiring affiliate marketer is under the impression that selling these products for a 75% commission will make them rich within weeks. Just do a simple Google search for any internet marketing product currently popular on online digital marketplaces, and you’ll be able to find countless numbers of reviews from bloggers who clearly never purchased the product themselves. I was tired of the super-saturation of such a morally-depleted niche, and so I decided to look elsewhere: freelance writing.

Freelance writing, like internet marketing, comes with its obvious advantages: it allows me to work from anywhere in the world for hours that I choose for myself. As opposed to internet marketing, however, where I worked truly for myself, now I am being chosen for writing jobs by those willing to hire me. Getting started on a freelance writing website is not so simple and many get dissuaded fairly early in the process. This is because it is very difficult for a freelancer without any proven experience to get hired above writers who have proven credentials and ironclad references.

 I initially signed up to freelance through Elance, the largest freelancing website, and they have anticipated this problem by creating tools which allow inexperienced writers to get started immediately. One such tool are the many “skills test” offered by Elance, which allows users to prove their knowledge on an online exam. Upon completion of the skills test, freelancers can choose whether or not they want their final score posted on their profile. If they score lower than they are happy with, Elance allows them to retake the skills test an unlimited number of times after an initial two-week waiting period.

I was also offered the opportunity to verify my academic credentials, so that there is a greater amount of confidence instilled in me by prospective employers. This is crucial for freelancers with a college education or other advanced certification which separates them from the rest of the pack. Another useful tool which results in my favor is that one’s country of origin is displayed next to each proposal that is made. Being that I was allowed to verify that I am from the United States, I am—justifiably or not—much more likely to be hired than if I was from a non-native English speaking country. There are in fact many job descriptions on Elance where it is explicitly mentioned that they are only interested in freelancers from English-speaking countries.

Another useful aspect of my Elance personal profile which it pays to take advantage of is the ability to post a portfolio of my previous writing experience. Personally, I have been able to add all of my writing experience from my days of internet marketing, which includes an enormous number of blogs posts, guest blogs and articles submitted to directories that I had used while involved in article marketing. This means that even though I have extremely limited experience on Elance itself, I can easily direct employers to countless articles that I have recently written across a whole range of niches.

I don’t intend on deleting my niche blogs, since I don’t know how successful this venture of freelance writing will turn out to be. I am very hopeful, though, and I think my ability to integrate my knowledge of internet marketing with my writing skills will enable me access to certain top-tier writing jobs. Many of the employers on Elance are actually involved in internet marketing, so I do not feel as if I am starting over—this is the area in which I have almost all of my online experience.

One of the clear advantages of freelance writing is that I am constantly being challenged in ways that I was not as an affiliate marketer. Internet marketing meant lots of tedious and repetitive work, but now I find myself involved with all kinds of high-level research that I am finding intellectually stimulating and enjoyable. Soon, after I have built up my reputation as a content writer, I hope to expand into the niche of copywriting. I think this will allow for an even stronger synthesis of my online marketing experience along with my writing abilities, and I hope that the process towards becoming an established copywriter on Elance does not take longer than six-twelve months.

As of now, the closest work experience that I have towards copywriting is a business I had writing the auction listings for websites on behalf of others. Besides for this pseudo website-flipping experience, copywriting is still very much a new frontier for me. Still, I am confident that with enough experience as a freelance writer, making the move towards copywriting will be relatively seamless. This would be a significant career move in the right direction from my days working at the lowest pole of internet marketing!   

Niche-Blogging Strategy: When to Expand

There were several signs that it was time for me to expand from the making money online niche. For one thing, the posts were getting tedious and horribly repetitive. It was if there was little else of substance that I had not yet written (and rewritten) and I was just writing for the sake of writing itself. I started niche blogging with the goal that I would be able to write a fresh and unique post each and every day, and for the first several weeks I had been mildly successful. By the time I had hit the two-month mark, however, it became pretty clear that this streak of mine was not going to last much longer. I knew in my heart that I should be writing for a niche in which the words would flow daily, something that was not happening with the self-employment niche.

Second, beyond for running out of information to write about—and yes, this problem was probably overstated, and I could have found information if I really wanted—I got tired of promoting products in the make money online niche. I felt like I was promoting products that I would never invest in myself, and that left me with a terrible feeling. This is particularly the case because people investing in self-employment internet marketing products are most likely individuals in desperate need of money. For all I knew, I was promoting products that would only spiral them into deeper trouble, and that was a deeply unsettling feeling for me. Even though all of the products that I was promoting had no-questions-asked risk-free refunds which were guaranteed, I was skeptical that all of the purchases of the products were completely aware of this factoid and to how go about receiving their money back.

To be sure, not all of the products in the internet marketing niche are like this. There are some great tutorials in the blogging niche, such as John Chow’s  blogging blueprint, of which I am a big fan. Still, I felt that the average product in this niche was your typical paid survey scam website, and I felt dirty simply operating in this niche. Between the lack of content on which I was able to write and a dearth of quality products to promote, I decided to begin looking for a new niche to promote.

The primary characteristics I was looking for were solutions to my difficulties with the earning money online niche. This meant it had to be a niche in which there was plenty to write about, and in which there would always be something new to learn. Moreover, it would preferably be a subject matter that I was personally interested in exploring, so that I could write about it with heart. Ideally, it would be a field in which there was constantly being new discoveries being made, because this would always ensure that I had what to write about. Lastly, I wanted a niche that would be in demand for a long time to come, safeguarding my blog from becoming obsolete earlier than I so desired.

In regard to my problem with the products in the internet marketing niche, I also wanted my new niche in which I felt entirely comfortable promoting its affiliate programs. I wanted products that make the world a better place, and not products which prey on the desperately unemployed. Ideally, they would be products that would be thought of as positive by most people, and also preferably products in which I would personally purchase myself.

In the end, following these criteria, I have narrowed my next niche blog to three possible topics: the “green” niche, the health niche, and the language-learning niche. Which one do you think I should choose? 

BloggingWithJohnChow.com Review: A Niche-Blog Blueprint

When I first encountered John Chow’s latest blogging blueprint, I already came in with a few years of affiliate marketing experience and had achieved moderate success in several niches. I had been experimenting with various forms of internet marketing and had tried different ways to monetize my blog effectively, eventually earning approximately $500 per month on my most successful niche blog. I thought I had finally made it, until I came across the numbers that John Chow was pulling in on several blogs simultaneously.

I invested in his product, anxious to learn a better system than the trial-and-error tweaking that I had been trying for so long. It was not as if I had never bought a blogging e-book before. In fact, I had at that time purchased 11 different blogging e-books and watched countless video tutorials. Ultimately, though, Blogging With John Chow was a guide fundamentally different than any of the products I had previously bought for one simple reason: it was a functional blueprint.

The previous blogging e-books I had encountered until this time each dealt with necessarily one component of building a successful blog. For example, one dealt with the early stages of blogging: tips for setting up a custom domain, choosing a blogging platform, a hosting plan, a template, choosing keywords, etc. Others dealt with link building and the various ways to increase your search engine rankings through writing guest posts, article marketing, link-exchanges, blogging directories, etc. Some dealt with how to take advantage of the fastest rising force on the internet—social media—and its impact on bloggers. Finally, I read a small e-book that tutored me in blogging software, since I am not very technologically inclined.

The problem with learning different subjects from a long list of sources was that oftentimes the information in one source was incongruent with what I had read in a different text. Even if they did not outright contradict each other—which did happen at times—there were plenty of instances where the information and techniques that were offered did not jive together. I was unable to devise a single cohesive strategy that would unify everything I was learning into one successful blogging plan, and I realized that was the most powerful force holding me back. 

In my opinion, the single greatest benefit of Blogging With John Chow is that it does afford aspiring niche bloggers this very unique opportunity. By doing so, this saves inexperienced bloggers untold amounts of heartache and headache that would otherwise be experienced in the first stages of setting up an income-earning blog. All of the information that is offered (which covers an extremely wide range of topics) comfortably meshes together into a single understandable blueprint for blogging success.

For me, the benefits paid off immediately. Based on advice provided by John Chow and Peng Joon, I decided to start a new blog in a niche I had not delved into yet. The idea was simple: I wanted to try out the techniques provided in their tutorials on a fresh blog in order to test their effectiveness. Until this point, I had been dealing with financial blogs and I decided my new blog would be in the health niche. Within my first two weeks, I had three sales from an affiliate program that I was running, and within one month that number tripled. Ultimately, I converted my other blogs to use SEO techniques that were hailed by Chow and Joon as well.

The guide promises that these techniques will be effective with just two hours of work a day, but I find that in order to truly maximize the potential of my blogs, I should be putting in six-eight hours. Considering that I am working from the privacy and comfort of my own home, I do not find this schedule constraining in the least, and in fact I generally feel quite privileged. In order to adopt such a lifestyle yourself, begin by learning more about this blogging blueprint and taking advantage of their limited discount by continuing here.

Helpful Habits: Dealing with Blogger’s Block

As a blogger generally working from the privacy of my own bedroom, it becomes all too easy to lose my cool every now and then. There are many aspects of blogging that can be particularly frustrating at times, and this is why I always insist that discipline is the single most important character trait for any blogger to improve upon. Honestly, I would even recommend working on one’s level of self-discipline before more obvious areas of interest, such as writing skills or knowledge of online marketing. A disciplined mind will be able to overcome distractions, and as a blogger sitting in front of a computer with several tabs opened simultaneously at all times, you can be sure that there will always be a healthy supply of distractions. As any blogger is aware, the ever-present “writer’s block” is not a problem solely relegated to those writing with pen and paper, and it applies just as much to someone sitting in front of his flat-screen.

Blogging can be frustrating when you know that you are in serious need of a blog post, but you simply cannot come up with information that can be assembled into a quality post. You may have even written a paragraph or two before realizing that the blog post isn’t going to lead anywhere useful, thereby retroactively making your writing little more than an exercise in typing. Blogging at its core is about sharing ideas and experiences with a universal audience, but sometimes you don’t always have to what to share. This is a problem when as a blogger you will often still feel the need to share a post. The likely outcome will be a post that you are not satisfied with, propelling your already-miserable self into further frustration.

It can be even more frustrating when you realize that a blog that you are competing with, that in your eyes has significantly inferior content, is beating your blog when it comes to search engine rankings. You wonder how it can even be possible that a website with almost no original or well-written content could be ranked so well in the top search engines. You suspect to yourself that foul-play is involved, but you have absolutely no empirical evidence other than a hunch in the back of an upset mind. Instead of focusing on something constructive like how you can improve your own blog, you spend your time and mental awareness on what is negative about the websites of others.

At these moments, I simply have to catch my own awareness and stop everything. I walk away from my computer and allocate my full attention towards a simple task. It might be something like making a glass of tea or eating a refreshing bowl of ice-cream—the only requirement is that my entire presence of mind is on this one action. Once I have done this for even just a few minutes, I can once again think about my blog with a clear mind. Instead of thinking negative thoughts and feeling resentment, I can now truly focus on my own writing.

In other words, the best cure for my blogger’s block is being completely mindful of what my goals are. In order to reach this stage, I first clear my mind of everything else, so that when I return my attention to my blog I know that only productive thoughts will be formulated. The basis of this idea is called mindfulness, and it has its roots in Buddhist traditions. While ancient Buddhist monks may not have anticipated their ideas being useful for niche bloggers interested in profiting through affiliate marketing, it doesn’t mean that their ideas are not entirely useful—they are! 

A Quick Guide to Niche Blogging: Part 1

I received an email the other day from a reader asking if I could post a simple how-to guide written in a step-by-step format for setting up a niche blog. I thought to myself that it would likely fit well as a blog post open to my entire readership, and that will be the goal of this post. Before we even get to the guide itself, we must define what we are speaking of when we refer to a niche blog. As opposed to a general blogs which may deal with a wider range of issues, a niche blog is focused on one specific area. The goal is to attract not the most amount of traffic (the way that is the case with most blogs), but instead to ensure that a specific audience is reached. This being the case, the way that one goes about optimizing a niche blog for search engines is strategically different than the techniques used with general blogs. Personally, I use niche blogs as a way of promotion digital products as an affiliate, and the following directions will be for those in pursuit of this goal.

Choosing a platform

Niche blogging does not require a fancy or sleek website. In fact, many times a simple blog will go a lot further than a complex website, since the focus of a reader of your site will be quite targeted. The goal is to have the reader come across that information relevant to his or her search as quickly as possible, without getting distracted by anything else along the way. Personally, I prefer to use Blogger or Wordpress, and  I lean towards Blogger myself. 

Choosing a Title

If having the keywords in the title of your blog is important in general, it is even more critical when it comes to niche blogs. Make sure that your keywords are in the actual title and domain name of your blog—this is absolutely crucial! When your website comes up in search engines, you want the name of your niche blog to jump out at your targeted audience as an authoritative source on the subject. In order to do this, create a title which will give the impression that your niche blog is completely dedicated towards providing information about the subject they are interested in researching.

Choosing Post Frequency

Since a niche blog is focused around a particular set of topics, it will not be possible to post with as much frequency as you would in regard to a general blog. This is not a problem, though, because what a niche blog lacks in quantity it will make up in quality. I generally will not post more than once a week on my niche blogs—as opposed to three-five times per week on my general blogs—but the caveat is that my niche blog posts are nearly twice as long. My general blog posts run about 500 words each, but I prefer that my niche blog posts approximate one thousand words in order to make up for the relative infrequency of posts.

Choosing Forms of Advertisements

The form of advertising must reflect the type of blog that you have created. If you are monetizing a general blog, the form of advertising itself will have to be general as well. This is why banner advertisements is the most common form of advertising on general blogs. On blogs with more particular subject matters, however, advertising must pinpoint the targeted traffic that the blog is seeking. This will allow for the maximization of profits per each targeted reader, and the best way to ensure this is by signing up with relevant affiliate programs to promote on your blog. The outcome of a successful affiliate campaign will take you a lot further than the broadness of a typical banner of advertisement. In order to bring about successful affiliate campaigns, I would recommend writing product reviews on your blog.

Choosing Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Similar to other areas in blogging, the form of SEO most optimal for your blog will be dependent on the type of blog that it is. A general blog that is simply seeking traffic may focus on building as broad an audience as possible, but a niche blogger will be after a chosen few. In order to ensure that his or her blog reaches this audience, time will be invested in joining the internet community of that niche. This will best be achieved through writing guest posts on relevant blogs in the niche, leaving helpful comments on the blogs of others, and by allowing others to write guest posts on your own blog.