I’ll be the first one to admit I probably don’t advertise my writing skills as much as I should. Half the time I am too busy actually writing, and the other half of the time I’m enjoying the break. But it’s always good to try and locate better quality and higher paying jobs, and that isn’t going to happen overnight.

Are there fewer copywriting (or just plain writing) jobs around now?

However it has become even more important to locate good writing jobs and new clients since the Google Panda update that occurred a couple of months back. I may seem to be going off topic here, but bear with me. First I want to share two very diverse reports that have appeared online recently. One of them is actually a press release, but it points to the apparent rise in demand for copywriting services on this particular site. The site in question is Copify and you can read the press release here.

But according to this next report, writing jobs have shrunk in the past couple of months.

Okay so here we have a report that flies in the face of the press release I’ve just linked to. Now the press release is promotional of course (it has to be by nature), but apparently the outsourcing site Freelancer has experienced a downturn in copywriting jobs in particular. You can read the report on their experiences here.

S0 where does this leave us when it comes to finding writing jobs?

Well for starters I personally believe there ARE fewer writing jobs around now than there were just a few short months ago. Everyone with a junk site, a cheap SEO site or any other kind of site that has been penalised by the Google Panda update has stopped ordering cheap content. They’re probably all licking their wounds and wondering what to do next. I don’t blame them.

BUT… according to various reports online (most notably this one from Angela Booth) the sky is the limit for writers who are prepared to reach for it. Junk content is no longer acceptable (if it ever was) and quality content is now vitally important. If you know where to market yourself, where to look and how to find the best clients, you could end up doing far better than you ever have before.

I am revamping and enhancing my own marketing techniques already. Are you? You should be – especially if you really value your writing and how much it is worth.

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

It’s a common enough feeling, since having a writing blog means putting your own thoughts and feelings on the page. But then that is generally what a lot of readers will read your blog for – they want to know what it’s like to be a writer and much more besides.

Personally I love having a writing blog.

Do you have your own writing blog?

I remember being very excited at starting to blog for the first time. I had a sticky start with a free blog that was eventually got rid of (by the blog network I was on) for having an affiliate link in it. Shame on me! At least I think that is why it disappeared; I discovered they don’t bother replying to emails to tell you why you strayed off the path.

Anyway that’s a different story. I realised that if I wanted a writing blog I could control 100%, I needed to have my own domain and hosting. And let’s face it, neither of those things costs very much.

Don’t put off starting your own writing blog – the sooner you do it the sooner you can get the benefits from it.

There are lots of benefits too; I listed as many as I can think of here, but you can probably think of more:

• you get to share your writing experiences with other writers
• you get feedback and interaction with other writers
• your writing blog can be monetized in various ways to provide another stream of income
• you can find clients directly through your blog
• you can show potential clients what you are made of and how solid your writing skills are
• you can gradually start to reach a bigger audience – something you wouldn’t have been able to do before

I think those are the main plus points to having your very own writing blog. There must be more. I know I have found clients via this blog who I wouldn’t have found otherwise, and because I also have a professional website under my own name, I can direct people there if they want any more specific information about hiring me.

So am I glad I got started on my own personal writing blog?

Absolutely! I have noticed a steady increase in readers and visitors over time (thank you!) and while it may not always be visible on a daily basis the visitor numbers have definitely been moving up month on month.

Hopefully this will all provide you with some encouragement for starting your own writing blog. Believe me, it’s worth it in ways you may not realise straightaway. If you are a new writer and you haven’t got any clips to show people when you apply for work, it’s good to be able to direct them to your blog – especially if it has a reasonable amount of content on it. It can bring you work, clients, colleagues and much more besides.

What will your writing blog bring you?

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

If you have a writing blog packed with interesting and readable blog content (you might use it to help you get more online freelance writing jobs perhaps) it is in your best interests to get it in front of as many people as possible.  This means writing more blog content as well as telling people when you have published it.

Syndicating your blog content with the help of Ping.fm

Ping.fm - making blog content easy

I’ve started using a nifty tool for WordPress which works together with Ping.fm.  It makes it easy to announce to all your social media sites that you have published some fresh blog content.

You can read the five step process for supercharging your blog content in this way at Ping.fm – how to autopost to all your social media sites quickly and easily in five easy steps.  I hope you find it useful.  Sometimes it can seem as if you publish your blog content and no one ever sees it.  But with Ping.fm you can make sure more and more people see your new blog content with every day that passes.

Does it take a lot of work to get your blog content in front of a bigger audience to start with?

To be honest, not really.  The hardest part of this to start with is to sign up to all the sites.  But you can do this in a step by step way, so your blog content is syndicated to more sites as you go along.  It doesn’t all have to be done in one hit.

And here is the big question – have I received more hits to this blog since syndicating my blog content with Ping.fm?

Definitely!  It was quite noticeable in a short amount of time too – within a few days.  I’ve been focusing on other ways of strengthening by blog posts as well, but there is no doubt that this has made a big difference.

Take a look at your blog content now – could it benefit from using this site as well?

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

I am writing this blog post at 10.14pm.

Do you get overwhelmed when you think about writing for yourself? (photo credit to nkzs at http://www.sxc.hu/profile/nkzs)

I have completed all my other work for the day and taken some time off in between those jobs as well.

And now I feel able to get a few moments in to contribute to my own blog – but only now all my other work is completed.

The thing is, by the time I actually sit down to write a blog post it practically writes itself.  Not literally obviously – although sometimes I wish that were true.  No, what I mean is that I have already thought through the topic and planned everything out in my head.  By the time I have got it all down on paper (or in this case, on my screen) everything is sorted and it takes minimal editing to bring it to the stage of getting published.

And I think this method of writing causes a problem at times.

I mean, look at today – it’s well into the evening and getting towards my bed time and I am only just now writing a blog post.  Is this the best method for doing things, or am I putting my own work behind that of my clients?

I give my client work a very high priority and this is as it should be – after all, they bring in a good income for me.  But this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t set aside any time for my own writing either.  And if truth be told, if I could sit down and get on with writing a blog post (or an article to promote one of my own sites, or any similar task) before starting my client work for the day, it wouldn’t take long to do it.  No more than half an hour or so at most, I should think.

So I may give this method of writing a try.

After all, by the time I get to the end of my working day it is all too easy to think, oh I’m tired, I’ll quit now and get on with writing that blog post tomorrow.  But this doesn’t get me to where I want to be.  It doesn’t result in any advancement towards some of my personal goals.

Watch this space – I may just be back soon to start writing about my progress with putting a tiny bit of myself first….

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

It’s taken three months to finally get it to the stage where I can launch it to the world, but tonight is the night when it has finally happened.  I would have liked it to have happened sooner, but thankfully the first three months of the year were rather busy on the writing front!

You can visit the site now at www.allisonwhitehead.co.uk to take a look.  As you can see I only have a couple of articles on there at the moment, but I am planning on adding new content very soon.  The main thing is the contact form, the ‘why hire me?’ section and of course my rates as well.

As you can probably guess the site has been squarely aimed at clients rather than my fellow writers.  Hopefully I will see a new stream of work coming in from that direction over time, particularly as I start to promote the site and take it out to a wider audience.

But for tonight I shall simply breathe a sigh of relief that I have achieved another one of this year’s writing ambitions.  In case you missed the original post, here they are in an abbreviated form:

1. Relaunch my main client focused website, www.allisonwhitehead.co.uk.  Achieved 30th March 2010.
2. Raise my writing fees.  Achieved early January 2010.
3. Attract more new clients.  Partially achieved as I have picked up some new clients already this year, but this one should always be ongoing!
4. Launch a new PLR site.  Nothing has happened to get this one moving as yet, although it was always going to take second place behind my professional website relaunch.  So this should be next on my list of things to do.
5. Publishing more on Hubpages.  I have published a few more hubs since the beginning of the year, practically doubling the amount I had on there before.  I haven’t added any more of late though so I shall redouble my efforts here from now on.

So not a bad start all in all this year, and with nine months still to go there is plenty of time left to achieve even more.

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

Are you attracting people from all over the world with your blogging?

This was written for the 100 Articles in 100 Days Ezine Articles Writing Challenge.  But while it doesn’t mention writing specifically, it still holds true if you are thinking of creating a blog to try and attract new writing clients.  Enjoy!

Here is a question for you – why do online businesses start blogging in the first place?

There are lots of answers to that one, but the main one is to get more clients.  No matter what that online business is there for, its main goal will be to increase its level of business so that it can bring in more clients and earn more money as a result.

Learning how to blog is one very good way of connecting with all the people who could become your customers in the future.  And the more you understand about the process of business blogging, the more success you are likely to garner as a result.

Focus is a key part of building up a successful blog on any subject.  You need to focus in on your niche and ask yourself how you can attract the attention of the people you want to have as customers.  What are they looking for?  What kind of questions might they have as potential clients?  How can you best answer these questions so that you can provide a good service, even through your blog?

A successful business blog breaks down the barriers between you and your customers.  Selling anything online means there are computer screens and perhaps hundreds or even thousands of miles between you and anyone who is thinking of buying from you.  That means you have to introduce yourself and your company through your blogging efforts.  If you can do this successfully, you will find you can build up a level of trust with everyone who comes across your blog.

As such it shouldn’t be a hard sell and nothing else.  By all means link to products you have for sale on your main website, but see your blog as a way of connecting with people more than anything else.  It is the introduction to your business if you like, whereas your website forms the main body of the piece.

Finally, don’t forget that regular content is essential for your business blog to be a success.  Make sure you keep it up and you will soon see the dividends for doing so.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

It doesn’t matter whether you are an online writer or you have some other kind of online business you want to promote.  A blog is one of the best ways to connect with your audience – whoever that may be.

Is your blog still 'under construction' - or are you focused on adding fresh content to it on a regular basis?

BUT you need to be doing it regularly.  I have stumbled across plenty of blogs online that have four or five blog posts in them… and then nothing for months.  You can see the exact date and time when that blog writer got bored and went off to do something else!

The number one thing you need to have when you are blogging is FOCUS.  It doesn’t matter if you want to promote your writing skills, your brand new eBook, your new website or anything else.  Just focus on putting some new content onto your blog every single day if you can.  At least make sure you have five or six new posts on your blog each week for a month or two.

Scheduling can be useful here.  If you get a spare couple of hours make sure you take advantage of it and write half a dozen blog posts – then schedule one for each of the next six days.  If you want people to find and read your blog you need to have a reason for them to visit.  And they will only visit if they have something fresh and interesting to read.

The more focused your blog is the better.  Write blog posts that are focused on a specific subject – even if you tackle that subject from all angles.  As an online writer you can tackle the subject of writing.  But if you do something else and you dabble in writing on the side, learn how to focus in on your topic and make the most of it.

But remember – regular content means regular rewards.  If you only post the occasional content item, you will only ever get the occasional reward in return.

Article source:  http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

I use Twitter most of all - click on the image! Which sites do YOU use for getting yourself out there and getting your name recognised?

You cannot fail to have heard about such websites as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Delicious and all manner of others.  They all fall under the social media umbrella, and millions of people log on to one or more sites every single day.

Okay so all that is fair enough – but how can these help with regard to writers?

Well, if you are planning on attracting clients and getting plenty of work as an online writer, you need to be letting people know you are there.  If you are online but you don’t put any effort into making sure you are visible, you could be waiting a long time to find your first few jobs!

Becoming known as a writer online is all about starting to connect with other writers and with people who could become clients in the future.  Obviously you want to make yourself known to clients but getting in touch with other writers can also be very fruitful.  This is easier to do on social media sites because everyone has a profile.  And if people list themselves as being a writer on the site, that gives you a potential contact for the future.

Now before you start joining up with all the social media websites you can find, I should tell you that you don’t need to go overboard here.  All you need to do is to join two or three sites and make the most of them.  This is far better than joining twenty or thirty of them and not being able to keep up with them all.

You need to be sure you are able to be on these sites fairly regularly, even if it is only for a few minutes a day.  Start building up a presence on each one, and link back to your website or writing blog (you do have one, don’t you?) on each profile you have.  From there you can gradually start making connections and making yourself known.

And you might just be surprised by the results you get in return.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead

In addition, you might want to read another article on my blog regarding Twitter.  It’s called ‘why regular tweeting is good for all writers‘.  Enjoy!

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

Writing a blog is something you could do for lots of reasons.  You could share ideas, talk about your life or blog about a hobby of yours.

Can writing a blog really help you win writing jobs?

But if you are a writer – or you want to earn money by doing online writing jobs – then you should create a blog to help you get jobs and make that a reality.

What some writers don’t understand is that being a successful writer is all about visibility.  If you think of it purely in terms of what you get out of it now, you won’t get the bigger payoffs that are waiting down the road.

You’re probably thinking, ‘Hey why should I write for nothing on my own writing blog when I can get paid to write for other people?’

That’s a very good point.  But think of it like this instead.  You are building up a body of work here that is accessible by lots of people.  This gives you more than one benefit in the long term:

1. You are polishing your writing skills and showing people what you are capable of.  This is great news because any potential client that happens along can see what you are made of before they contact you.  Your odds of winning jobs from your writing blog should increase over time.

2. You can write and sell products of your own to a mailing list you build up from your blog readers.  This takes time too, but the bigger the list gets the more you can expect to earn from it.

3. You can earn money through affiliate opportunities.  Find products that other writers are likely to find useful and become an affiliate for them.  This brings in yet another stream of income.

4. You can reach a wider and bigger audience the more time goes on.  In a while you may not actually need to go out and hunt for jobs any more – they might all come to you.

So you see, writing a blog of your own has plenty of benefits.  You just need to tap into them yourself.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Allison_Whitehead

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time

That’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?  We’re all after those writing jobs that we constantly see advertised – even if they aren’t all good.

But how GOOD are you at bagging those jobs when they come along?  Do you wait for them to come along or do you go all out to actually get them?

How is your freelance writing job search going?

It’s amazing how many people spend a lot of their time on forums having a moan about how hard it is trying to find and successfully bag a writing job or two.  Of course it is hard.  There is, after all, a LOT of competition out there.  But if they spent more time focusing on finding freelance writing jobs than they did on those forums, they would probably get more of them in the first place!

The thing is, a lot of people think it is easy.  It’s not.  Sheer pigheadedness was what got me my first few writing jobs.  I spent hours every night going from site to site, looking out for all the adverts you see for writers that popped up on every writing site I went on.  Most of them – probably 99% of them – I’d either seen before or they didn’t lead to anything worthwhile.  But I still kept on looking.  I still kept on applying for jobs.  And I still kept on persevering because I didn’t want to NOT succeed.

Does that make sense?  I only ever wanted to write for a living so I made up my mind to keep going until it happened, even if it took years to do (which it did).

So really, if you are looking for writing jobs and you aren’t finding them, sit back and think about what you are doing.  Could you do more?  Could you change what you are doing now so you are more efficient?  Do you think there is any way you could make more headway faster than you are right now?

It could of course be that you are being a little impatient.  I developed a way of thinking that meant I would apply for a job and then forget all about it and focus on the next one.  If I got one – which eventually I did – then that was great news.  If I didn’t, all my energies were focused on the future.

Hopefully this blog will help to inspire you to keep on plugging away until you succeed yourself.  As such I am going to build up different areas of it that will help YOU in different ways.  For example there is a section on working from home and another one on web writing.  These both contain information that will help you to develop a writing career that you can be proud of.

I am aiming to add some longer posts in future as well – ones that will read more like mini-reports, if you like.  And of course there is the Page of Fives too that I introduced you to yesterday.  I’ve got a great idea for the next post in that section that will be coming very soon!

But for now, just focus on how your search for writing jobs is going.  Have you achieved much or not?  Don’t worry whatever the answer might be.  Just focus on getting better, because if you do that you certainly will in time.

My Online Freelance Writing Career - ... earning a living one word at a time