Career Guide for Beginners in the Field of Freelance Writing
What is Freelance Writing?
A freelance writer works on the basis of self-employment and is more or less done by professional writers. Freelance writers are considered as independent business owners.
Related: Explore career opportunities for young graduates
Freelance means to work on various different projects for a short span of time without being a full time employee
The word ‘freelance’ originates from the Middle Ages. Freelance was used to define the knights who would protect the king who paid them the more, instead of being devoted to one particular king. Hence such knights came to be known as ‘freelanced’.
Similarly, a freelance writer isn’t bounded to write for any particular publication or business, rather is free to sell his / her skill to whomsoever pays more. Both technical and creative writing are included in freelance writing, however in any case the commitment duration is short spanned.
Usually a freelance writer with creative writing skills, writes first and then looks out for a publication house for publishing, whereas, a freelance writer is first hired for specialized and technical projects.
5 Writing Skills You Require as a Freelance Writer
More than just sound writing skills are essentially required in order to become a prosperous freelance writer. After all, being a freelancer means running your own show single handedly.
Apart from writing, as freelance writer has to manage all the bits and pieces from bills to payments to networking and marketing all by themselves.
Yes, it sounds very overwhelming. But with time, a bit extra work and effort and of course experience you can learn the art of being an all-rounder self — employee successfully.
Here in the article a few skills that are essential for you to acquire or re-acquaint yourself with to make the most out of your career as a freelance writer.
1. Time Management and Organizational Skills
One of the most fundamentally essential skillset required to be a successful freelance writer is having good organizational and time management skills. Being self — employed means you have to keep yourself organized, on task and efficient at all times.
It’s a bit tricky but with the use and help of few tools you can manage your time while being organized.
To-Do Lists
Countless to — do lists apps could be used or can be done old school way with an old school hand written to — do list. Physical or a digital — doesn’t matter. Whichever method you use, what’s important is having a ‘to -do list’ regularly.
Design a weekly or monthly to-do list by mentioning all that which is to be accomplished in that particular time span and then further break down and simplify the complex tasks by adding them as smaller tasks in the daily to-do list.
A Calendar
As said before, physical or digital doesn’t matter. What matters is that you plot all your jobs and deadlines on that calendar and then use it at all times for quick and easy references.
An Uncluttered Filling System
Both digital and physical filing systems are referred here. Maintain separate folders for every client and also sub folders for every particular job. Make sure to clearly label each and every file while periodically backing up digital files to be on the safe side.
2. Accounting And Business Management Skills
Accounting is a word dreaded by many. But as a freelancer it’s fundamentally important for you to know how to manage your personal bills, income and other finances. Also it’s essential that you cultivate a business acumen in order to grow and sustain your business.
A few must know basic and important things regarding accounting are listed below:
Maintain Accurate & Thorough Records
Track all the invoices that are sent and payments that are received by you. Also maintain a record of purchases related to your work in order to claim at tax time.
Create Professional Invoices
Nowadays, with the availability of tools and programs invoicing freelance clients has become much easier and hassle free.
Understand & Calculate Tax
Not fun yet the most important subject. As a freelancer, it’s necessarily important for you to know what taxes are to be paid and not be paid by you. Depending on individual circumstances it varies.
Coming to the business management side, you will realize that the organizing and record keeping skills you have cultivated are a blessing in disguise. Record keeping would assist in measuring over the time progression and in taking decisions regarding business growth and development.
3. Networking Skills
Networking is a term that mostly makes people to move out of their comfort zones. However, for freelancers networking can be a pretty daunting task. Generally freelance writers prefer working in solitude therefore pursuing connecting opportunities with others within and out of the industry can be challenging.
Networking is the one of the best techniques to bond with prospect clients. Mostly freelancers acquire more jobs and business growth via referrals or recommendations or good old fashioned way i.e. word of mouth.
Before the Coronavirus outbreak, events and conferences were great way build business network. However, presently it’s only viable to interact and get to know other people virtually.
Social media platform such as LinkedIn, Twitter etc. are amazing platforms for acquiring now jobs and connecting with prospect clients.
4. Editing Skills
As said before that freelance writers must be all — rounder. Despite writing being your key skill, you must own decent editing and proofreading skills.
Self-editing skills vastly increases the quality of your own work. One of the utmost important things to being a freelance writer is learning to distance yourself from your own work and then successfully editing it.
Ultimately, freelance writing and decent self -editing concur each other. Therefore, cultivating editing skillset is important. Your polished written pieces will help you in acquiring new clients while also keeping existing clients and also builds your portfolio to display.
5. Marketing Skills
Marketing is a basic necessity for any business. Being a freelancer, you are running your own show, therefore it’s entirely up to you to make certain that all your services and skills are effectively marketed.
Following are the significant marketing tools that are a must have for a freelance writer.
Professional Website
An online website is the main source of acquiring business. Prospect clients generally visit business’s websites in order to learn more about the business and make the buying decision.
Blog
Blogging serves as the best approach for content marketing and can be very fruitful for freelance writers. A blog works as a showcase to display your work, make your name known in the market whilst providing your followers with useful content.
Social Media Presence
Website, blog and social media profiles will assist you in building a strong and constant online presence, making it easy for the clients to look for you whilst giving you an opportunity to display your work, skills and services.
Top 10 Websites for Freelance Writing Gigs
1.Upwork
Upwork, formerly known as Odesk is one the famous freelance marketplace. Offers Job postings for content marketing experts, graphic designers and freelance content writers. This marketplace is best for experts as the website uses previous work experience to build reputation on the platform.
2. iWriter
iWriter creates easiness for beginners in acquiring prospect clients. For signing up it requires a form and complete two short writer prompts of about 250 words each. According to the result, writers are allowed to choose writing jobs and gain experience with new clients.
3. Blogging Pro
Blogging pro is entirely dedicated to bloggers and does not offer opportunities to either any freelance creative designer or professional. However the site does posts offerings for publishing and editing jobs other than freelance writing jobs.
4. Guru
Another freelance marketplace to acquire freelance jobs is Guru. Writers can set up their writing profiles and showcase their previous work to attract new prospect clients. It allows users to set a standard rate to make the hiring and contracting procedure easy. User profiles displays a freelancers expertise and skills so that the profile shows up in the searches.
5. Freelancer
Freelancer.com is an online job portal that provides freelance writers with writing opportunities and job openings at either small business or giant organizations. Freelancer.com, just like other freelance websites permits writers to bid for projects. At times the projects are one — time gig while the rest offers work for longer time durations.
6. People per Hour
A similar freelance market place as Fiverr. Bids and offers are easily reviewed on the platform and also provides a built in communication channel feature to assist projects move smoothly along the pipeline. Website also hold design contests where creators compete for projects while showing off their design work.
7. Writer Access
Writer access is a platform from where organizations can commission out content. The platform offers a tool to help businesses out with keyword research and also web development.
To sign up on writer access, it’s a prerequisite for you to a resident of United Kingdom, United States of America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or Ireland.
Initially after setting up the profile the website takes a writing test. After that the experts will verify your aptitude and expertise and then connect you with the appropriate potential writing gigs.
8. Constant Content
Constant content — a writing agency that connects business with the writers for the purpose of web content creation from blog posts to social media posts. The website has a database of more than above 100,000 professional writers that have successfully created content for above 50,000 businesses.
9. The Writer Finder
The Writer Finder connects business owners with freelance writers for content production. Freelance writers can join the writer finder’s database by signing up on their website. The writer finder is a platform for writers with new writing talents at any skill level.
10. Text broker
Text broker is a writing agency allowing writers to acquire new clients. Text broker offers free sign up to freelance writers, giving access to thousands of writing jobs. To make the working with clients stress-free and well-organized, the website itself manages payment and features project management tools. It also provides access to writer tools so that the writers can improve their skills while obtaining feedback on their content.
