So you want to make some money on the side but you don’t want to work away from home. There are literally thousands of ways to make money online either as a side hustle or as a way to create a full-time income to keep you away from the 9-5 grind.
Do you or did you ever like to write? We ll with so many new blogs popping up daily and the need to fill content quick it’s never been easier to start earning money as a freelance writer, even if you have ZERO experience.
Why Freelance Writing?
I mean why not? You have the flexibility to make your own hours in order to earn extra cash to help supplement your income. Depending on what you want to to get out of it and your client load you could work as little as 10 hours a week or as many hours as your heart’s desire.
The best part of it is that it gives you flexibility. If your’e an early riser like myself maybe you get up before the rest of the house, pour that first cup of coffee and let you fingers tickle the keyboard. Or maybe you’re the night owl that stays up past everyone for that quiet time and instead of roaming through the social media pages put your time to use by generating content.
Freelance writing is an ideal career (part-time or full-time) for stay at home mom or dad’s. As mentioned above you can put in the amount of hours when and how you want. You can be there for the school activities, or the practices and you can make extra money in your spare time, if there is such a thing. 🙂
Where Can You Find Freelance Writing Jobs?
There are several platforms out there and each one has several writing jobs available. The most well know places are probably Fiverr, Indeed, Problogger, iFreelancer, and Upwork.
Places like Indeed, iFreelance, and Problogger post search boards that are useful when and do post freelance writing jobs. I have talked to many people that have found work from these forums.
Fiverr is a well established sites for freelancers in all genres to show their work and be open for job bids. Fiverr is very competitive and many times people are looking for freelancers with the highest ratings, of course you can’t get ratings until you sell your work. TYhis can make Fiverr a challenging platform at times, but once you can break into the ratings your opportunities can soar.
Upwork is is one of the larger platforms for freelance writing jobs out there. Like Fiverr there are all kinds of freelance genres to choose from. Depending on how you look at it Upwork doesn’t take into account your resume. All freelancers start at the same level and have to earn their stripes so to speak on their site.
My advice to start on Upwork starting out is to not look at the high paying jobs, but looks at several low paying (easier) jobs and do really well to earn 5 star ratings. This will help boost your rating quick and rank you higher on the ratings list.
They do charge commission, so make sure you look closely at what you will be charged.
So How to Actually Make Money as a Freelance Writer?
Now here is what everyone really wants to know. If you don’t have one coming in then sooner or later you will develop your niche. Your niche could be based off genres such as fitness, finance, beauty, or many other genres. Or, your niche could be based off how you write such as blogs, memos, email, etc.
Find your niche and become an expert in the field that can write solid content quickly. You must have quality content, but remember the more time you put into it the less you make per hour if you want to calculate you time that way.
If you don’t mind not getting credit for what you write then ghostwriting is the way to go. As I mentioned early there are new blogs begging for content popping up daily. The owners of these blags want to get them up and running to monetize them, but until they have 30-40 post they wont make a lot of money off the blog.
In those case they will post a job for a certain type of blogpost. The owner of the blog will take the credit for the blog and the ghostwriter will take the money and run. There are several people making good money as a ghostwriter, and as your reputation grows, so does your price tag.
Ready To Dive In?
If you want to make enough dough so you can break free from the 9-5 then you are going to need to bust your tail to get up and going.
Take the little jobs to get going and grow your portfolio as you get your sea legs. As you learn how to take your writing hobby into the business world grow with it.
Never keep your eggs in one basket. I used to say this in the logistics world where I spent 30 plus years and I say it here. You may think you have your cash cow in one client, but what happens then they shift focus, or the budget doesn’t call for freelance writers anymore, then your left spitting in the wind.
Manage your work and make sure you keep good records of what you are doing and where to store your work. I highly recommend using Google Docs. Most of your clients will be fine with exchanged documents as Google Docs is easily accessible, secure and allows file sharing.
I hope this was helpful. Keep checking back as I put out more information on Freelance Writing and many other work from home ideas.
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