Now, first off, let's define who a freelancer is:
Simply put:
A freelancer is a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term.
So, being a freelance writer means you're not permanently under the employment of a specific organization.
You're more like a digital nomad who walks from place to place digitally, looking for greener pastures.
So, it’s safe to say that being a freelance writer simply means you’ve decided to make money out of writing.
Till date, most writers don’t have a single idea that they can monetize their skills.
There are tons of way to monetize your writing skills, and I’ll list a few of them below:
Creating books (Ebooks, hardcovers)
• Participating in contests
• Freelancing
• Becoming a contributor (guest writing)
• Creating a blog
• Become an editor
• Copywriting.
Etc.
Well, of all of them mentioned above, freelancing is what I'll be discussing.
But, asides knowing how to monetize your write-ups, you should be a great writer first.
Nobody wants to hire a writer with poor writing skills.
So, the huge question should be?
How do you ascertain if you’re good writer?
If you can transform imaginations into text, you're a good writer.
If you can win your audience with words, then you're certainly good at writing
If you can summarize anything in a few words, and it makes deep sense, then you'd make it in writing.
If you can convert real happenings to text, and it move people's emotions, then you have a career in writing.
If you can research deeply from other people’s work, content, projects, articles, etc., and make a UNIQUE and non-plagiarized content, then professional writing is for you.
So, why do people write?
People write for various reasons, which might include - critiquing, fun, entertainment, reportage, selling, educating, informing, and making money, amongst others.
But for the sake of this session, I am focusing mainly on the professional side of writing - a.k.a - The part with which you can make side money.
This means you must treat your freelance writing career as a BUSINESS if you want to scale financially with it
Having said that, let’s get into what professional writing truly means -
Google’s definition goes thus:
"Professional writing is a style of writing that is clear, concise, and seeks to convey information and ideas quickly in a professional setting."
Professional writing is geared towards informing or persuading an audience in the world of work and commerce.
But my definition of professional writing is very different.
I simply refer to “professional writing” as making a BUSINESS out of writing.
No long grammar.
Here are some steps that can help you niche down -
1. First off, no writer had a clear idea of the niches they’re dominant in when they started out.
So, the journey to niche discovery might be a lengthy one, which means you’d need to try out several niches first, and gain clarity as you move on.
2. Secondly, you should be observant when people compliment and applaud you when you write a specific kind of content.
This is more like identifying your strength.
3. Thirdly, you should focus more on those contents you were being applauded for.
You can achieve this by following up on those who write similar content, and study their writing patterns, sentence structures, and ideas.
4. Fourthly, you need to start practicing on that discovered niche. Yes, practice makes better.
You can decide to write 500 words on your chosen niche daily, or 1000 words as the case might be.
But the aim is to write every day, for 30 days, then you’ll find out that you now know your niche.
Or, you can attempt to brainstorm - This means, you need to write down every thought, or words that comes to your head every moment.
5. Lastly, get an accountability partner or a mentor, who will discipline, and put you on your feet when you’re demoralized or looking for excuses as to why you can’t further your journey into niche discovery.
[9/11, 20:30] Nonso Onyejemezi: Making a career out of writing can be complex, but I'll break it down.
So, making a career out of writing requires the following steps:
1. First of all, you should equip yourself with the mindset that you are going into a business, and not a mere job
2. Secondly, you should ask other established writers to critique your content, and provide you with honest feedback.
3. Thirdly, you should be ready to start off with low-paying writing tasks, so you can build your writing skills, and portfolio too.
4. Fourthly, you should be able to narrow down your writing niche, so you can gain expertise and, clients would also perceive you as an authority
5. Lastly, buy books, materials, guides, and training from those ahead of you, so as to skip some hurdles ahead of your journey
Now, note that you don't need to be a Jack of all trade in writing.
It doesn’t go down well in many cases ...
Below are some niches I listed out to give you clarification.
Academic writing
Book writing (Ghostwriting)
Technical
Non-fiction
Fiction
Webpage
Blog contents
Homepage
Travel
Sales page
Email copies
Medical writing
Short stories
News reportage
Business/financial
Horror
Romance
Historical
Scriptwriting (Video/text)
Biographies
Health
Fitness
Relationship/Dating
Self - Help
Reviews
Product description
Etc.
As we all know, LinkedIn is the largest online hub, where professionals converge, connect, network, share ideas, offer jobs/services, and get jobs too.
With over a 750Million+ members, LinkedIn shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to using it to source for writing clients.
The truth is; getting writing clients on LinkedIn requires a rare kind of smartness because they can be quite strict, business-conscious, corporate, and most times — very serious folks
So, first of all, you need to revamp your LinkedIn profile (If you have an account already).
But if you don’t have any, simply head over to LinkedIn.com and create one.
Now, back to revamping your profile.
The first tip I’m giving is a long-term strategy.
First off, with this strategy, you would first of all edit your LinkedIn profile to look catchy and professional. (This is for those with existing accounts).
Please, as a beginner on LinkedIn, avoid adding too many titles to your profile —
E.g., Serial Entrepreneur, Social Media Manager, Content Creator, Brand Strategist, Ecommerce Expert, Affiliate Guru, Crypto Lord, etc.
Try as much as you can, to stick to what you do so you don’t confuse your audience.
Since you are a freelance writer, you should simply add that to your profile, but instead of just writing ‘ freelance writer ’ on your profile, it’s more professional to narrow it down to the niche of writing you’re an expert at.
Let’s say, you’re an ‘Email & Salespage Copywriter’.
Instead of using ‘freelance writer’, you can use ‘ Expert Email & Salespage Copywriter ’.
This gives a sense of confidence and trust to anyone who visits your profile.
So, after that, next thing is to start writing…
YES!
Start writing VALUABLE contents on your LinkedIn page. These contents could be short powerful quotes, fictional/personal life or inspirational stories, etc.
Also, try commenting on the posts of big influencers so you can gain visibility.
Wish people "Happy Birthdays, " Say Congratulations"...
Just engage to the optimum.
By doing all these, people will start feeling your presence, and start getting comfortable around you.
You can extract content ideas from the posts of those in your niche. See what they are posting, the manner they write, and the kind of words they avoid using.
Then tweak, and create something unique from their ideas.
Those write-ups will always keep your connections glued to your page.
If you consistently do this for a lengthy time (Let’s say on daily basis, for 3 months), your connections would have it ingrained in the depths of their hearts that you are a great writer.
That way, some will certainly reach you when they have writing gigs. Or, they’d give you listening ears when you approach them via Direct Message.
Like I said earlier, you shouldn’t expect quick results with this strategy, its long term, so it takes time, but it’s rewarding
Now, to the second method. The one is simpler and quicker.
So, in this strategy, you will use some filter options on LinkedIn to easily find those who are looking for writers on their pages.
To do this, you’d be needing a PC/laptop. It’s easier to navigate through those filters with a PC.
These are the steps on how to do it below:
First step is to click on the “jobs” icon:
Then type "Freelance Writers" in the search bar
Then click the category slightly under jobs, and you'd find these options:
All
People
Jobs
Posts
Companies
Schools
Groups
Courses
Services
Then select posts, and enter
The next page that displays will contain posts from the personal profiles of people who are looking for writers. See the screenshot below for an example of such.
Locate “Date Posted” at the top of the page, and click it, select “Past 24 Hours”, and select “Show Results”.
This is to ensure you can only see recent posts of those who need writers.
You can now pitch them via inbox, but be professional about it.
Some of them will include emails to their posts, when you find such, I’ll advise you to reach them via email, they respond faster.
Also, try as much as you can to compelling good pitches when reaching out to a client.
Convincing a client is quite tricky, but simple, and requires a tint of smartness.
For instance, let’s assume you see a job description where a client states he’s looking for someone to write Amazon affiliate buyer guides.
You can start by NOT telling the client about your years of experience in writing buyer guides. You should try as much as possible to find solutions to the task.
And you can do that by taking a sneak peek at his job description.
You can write your pitch this way:
Hello John,
“After going through your job description, I got to the conclusion that you might have had Amazon affiliate buyer guide contents that didn’t convert in the past and this can be very saddening for any site owner because your site is likely to drop in Google ranking due to poor contents.
However, the solution to this issue is simply churning out quality, well-researched, and SEO-optimized contents, and with those, you’d assuredly get that result you always wanted for your site.
I’m willing to write a sample content for FREE for you, and if it seems satisfactory, then we can go ahead with the nitty-gritty of the entire task.
Also, before we embark on the task, I’ll be joyed if I can get the link to your site so I’ll run a quick audit on it and see how to proffer further solutions to skyrocket your site’s performance.
I await your positive response.
Shola Mohammed Nwachukwu
Now, if you read that pitch closely, you’d notice I didn’t mention anything about “experience” or who I’ve worked with previously because most clients don’t care about those unless they ask along with the project.
Rather, I tried to proffer solutions, and that’s what moves every client to consider you.
So, always avoid talking about yourself or boasting about how you worked for President Biden when pitching, and simply find solutions from their job description.
See the screenshot below, it was one of the cold pitches I sent to someone while using the same method I showed you above.
Before you use this method to find clients. Be sure you have previous samples of tasks you’ve done because they will be demanded.
And the samples should be organized in a link. It depicts professionalism.
To create a portfolio, just head over to mediafire.com, create a free account, click on upload, and arrange all your files in a newly created folder.
Then copy the link to that folder, and share with it your prospective clients.
Other websites you can use for this purpose include dropbox.com, imgur.com, wetransfer.com, onedrive.com, and Google drive.
Most importantly, you must check the job description closely to ascertain if it’s a task you can do
IMPORTANT: You should endeavor to read up on how to do basic SEO. It will boost your chances of clients retaining you.
Also, any writer who does SEO-optimized writing is like a golden fish amid other fishes.
Then, learn how to use basic WordPress, like editing and content publishing, because most clients would prefer a writer that knows how to use WordPress, over one who has zero ideas on how to use it.
You can find FREE resources on how to do all these on YouTube, and Google.
Lastly, be mindful of how you send messages to people via LinkedIn, they could report your account if they feel you are spamming.
I hope this helps you through job search, feel free to drop your comments and also share.