The life of a freelance writer is not an easy one. It requires a lot of work, you will experience a lot of disappointment, and it can be very frustrating. You’re competing against thousands of other writers—the vast majority of which are prepared to undercut you—and you’ll fail more times than you succeed.
But if you put the hours in, if you work hard and if you follow a few basic rules, there’s no reason why you can’t make a career out of it.
The Site and Your Profile
Your first step should be to signup for a freelancing platform like Upwork. There are other platforms, but this is the biggest and best. The others can wait until you have more experience.
Your Upwork profile is how you sell yourself, so spend some time getting this right.
1. Profile Picture: Choose a picture that is professional. More LinkedIn and less Facebook; more yearbook picture and less mugshot.
2. Education: Include anything related to literature and language; omit anything that does not.
3. Experience: Think like a real estate agent. If your only writing credits were a short piece in a college magazine and a self-published eBook, you can say you “were first published during college” and “are a published fiction author”.
4. Portfolio: You will be prompted to include snippets of your work as documents, but no one reads these. Instead, post visual pieces—covers of books you wrote and magazines you wrote for. All jobs have some visual component, even if it means posting a screenshot of website content. You should also include a single document of your writing, preferably in different genres and styles.
Quote a Realistic Price
It’s important to quote a realistic price for each job. If you quote over the odds you will struggle to find work, and when you do and the client realizes they didn’t get what they paid for, you’ll lose out. Determine what level you’re at, set a conservative price, and build steadily from there.
Non-native writers charge anywhere up to $0.01 per word. Inexperienced amateurs can charge up to $0.04. Professional writers with experience go as high as $0.10. Any writer good enough to charge this amount is also quick enough to write 2,000+ words an hour, which means they’ll earn over $200 an hour.
Build Slowly and Don’t Get Sloppy
For the first 2 months you should focus on building your profile. You won’t make a lot of money, but that’s not important. As long as you make enough to cover your Connects and to pay the bills, you’ll be okay. The money will follow once you have established yourself.
Only work with clients who have a track record of paying well and leaving good feedback. Ignore the feedback others have left for them and focus on the feedback they have left for others. You need to bide you time, while making sure you don’t waste your Connects and don’t drop your price drastically.
Once you get into the swing of it, you’ll want to avoid working on small one-off jobs. But for now, you can’t refuse anything. Take what you can get, because something small can lead to something huge.
Keep Clients Happy
Your first clients will make or break you. If you keep them happy, they will keep the work coming, they’ll leave you good feedback and they’ll make you rich. If you frustrate them with missed deadlines and poor work, they’ll destroy you.
90% of freelancers charging $0.05 per word or less regularly miss deadlines. Above this, it’s rare, but it does happen. As a result, if you’re working with an experienced client and you always deliver, you will standout.
If you do make a mistake, offer to do free work to make it up to them. In most cases, they will refuse. But it’s the thought that counts and it’s the thought that will secure you further contracts.
Don’t Take it Easy
There is more to learn, but to begin with these rules should help.
Just make sure you don’t take it easy, especially in the beginning. You have to standout from the crowd, and hard work, dedication and relentless effort will help you to do that.
So, get out there, try your hand at this exciting career and see if you can make your mark as a successful online freelance writer.
