I love my freelance writing career.

I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But a freelance writing career isn’t something to be picked up and discarded when something better comes along. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to think this is the case, and we have the economy to thank for it.

I can fully understand why so many people are floundering around trying to find something else to earn money with. But writing is often seen as the easy option. Just sit down, bash something out and send it off to a website that pays a few dollars for your trouble. Alternatively you might earn a few dollars from advertising options, depending on the type of website you go to.

The bottom line is this – if you’re seriously thinking about starting a freelance writing career, you need to consider whether the word ‘career’ should apply in your situation.

I always knew I wanted to be a writer – I never wanted to do anything else. This is very different from bumbling along quite happily in a job, only to find you suddenly have to look for another form of income because your hours are cut or your job is at stake. It’s also different from writing for fun and entertainment in your spare time, when earning a full time living from it doesn’t matter.

Make no mistake – an online freelance writing career is NOT an easy option.

Anyone who is doing it for a living will tell you that it requires a lot of hard work and discipline if you want to do it properly. You might well succeed at this if you really have what it takes and you’re like a terrier with a bone – you won’t let go once you’ve got your teeth into it. But if you’re only looking at this career because you have found yourself in a difficult situation, you might want to think twice before diving in. You need as much determination and pigheadedness to succeed with a freelance writing career needs as you would in any other career.

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

Are you selling plenty of articles online, or do you want to sell more?

“I want to sell articles, but I don’t know what to write about.”

This is something I get asked quite a lot, so I thought I would reveal the answer here in case you are having the same problem.  The answer is quite simple – write about anything and everything you can!

When you are trying to sell articles online, you will find that people are looking for all kinds of different material.  I have sold articles on conservatories, management, self help, writing, eBay, lotteries, currency issues, computer equipment, and many more besides.  I could write an article 1000 words long and more that is just a list of the subjects I have written about.

But getting started can be tricky.  That’s why I would recommend starting with what you know about.  Jot down a list of subjects you feel confident you could write easily about.  So for example, maybe you’re a good cook.  That should go on your list.  Maybe you are a parent.  Okay, so you could write articles on parenting.  What about the job you do or those you have done in the past?  You could write lots of articles around those as well.

Watch out as well for writing jobs that are advertised that appeal to you because of the subject matter.  Make sure you apply for them – you won’t get them all but even one or two will be enough to set you off on the right path.  And the more you write the more you will feel confident about what you are doing, so you can expand your knowledge base to include subjects you are interested in but don’t know much about.

There is no magic subject that is better to write about than any other.  The best ones for you are the ones you know about.  Everything else extends from there.

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

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

Could your blog - or someone else's - bring you money?

Some writers do have blogs, but you would be surprised by how many don’t.  Blogging is not only a skill that should be built up to enable writers to be able to write and sell blog posts to clients, it can help them too.

There are plenty of ways you can use blogging to earn more money for yourself as a writer, both directly and indirectly.  For example, I stated above that you can blog for other people.  Some people end up with so much going on online that they cannot find the time to write their own posts anymore.  If this is the case then you can step in and charge a fee for every post you write.

But you should still have your own blog because you can make money directly from that as well.  Think of your blog as a showcase for your own work – you can share your experiences with new writers and promote any writing books you may have to them.  These could be self published or be online to sell via download.  They don’t have to be published via a major publisher.

You can also find new clients through your blog.  People will contact you if they like how you write and they will ask for your fee structure and what you can do.  I know of many writers – me included – who have found keeping a blog to be highly beneficial in this way.

Of course there is nothing to stop you from monetizing your blog either.  You can put Google Adsense on it, join the Amazon affiliates program and recommend specific writing books – the choice is yours.  The task is to get the right mix between building up income streams and building up the possibilities for getting more readers and more clients as well.  It can all come together in time if you are prepared to put the work in.

Ironically some writers are so busy trying to find clients that they don’t have the time to put their own writing blog together.  But it is worth doing so, because as we have seen there are lots of possibilities with it and lots of things that you can do with it.  The more you persevere, the more you can push ahead to a future as a freelance writer with plenty of clients and more success than you may have dreamed of.

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

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

How indeed?  Finding article buyers is a constant task for all freelance writers, whatever markets you aim for and whether they are online or off.

Article buyers are waiting all round the world to pay you for your writing - you just need to find them

But there are article buyers all over the place, and that is one thing that you always need to bear in mind.  They are EVERYWHERE – you just need to know how to find them.  And what’s more, you need to persevere in learning how to find them.

Every online writer has a different method for finding article buyers for the work they produce.  Some writers create articles themselves and then sell them on sites like Constant Content, offering their work directly to article buyers on there.  Others look for jobs first, and then write articles to fulfil the jobs they have won.

Both methods are equally good and worth doing, and every writer has their own favourite sites they can find work on.  For example, I know of people who get almost all their writing jobs from sites like Elance.  But I don’t focus on that particular site, not at the moment anyway.  I sell articles directly on Constant Content, and I get a lot of work by being part of a writing group as well.

But I have also found clients via Twitter, and via Craigslist in the past as well.  And having my own website and blog has helped a lot too.  It is as much about being visible as it is about being out there and actively looking for article buyers who have work available.

So remember to make yourself visible to article buyers, as well as making sure you get yourself out there and looking at the same time.

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

Whew – okay first of all I apologise for the long title!  But this is something that people do search for and ask about, so I thought it warranted an answer.

I should apologise to anyone reading this that isn’t in the UK too.  But this is a topic that applies to ALL writers, no matter where you live.  Just substitute the ‘UK’ part of the title for whatever country you happen to reside in, and carry on reading with that change in mind.

Can you find writing jobs in your own country as well as worldwide?

When you think about online writing, what comes to mind?  Probably the internet, since that is where you will get all your work from.  And in turn you will get that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing you can grab work from all over the world.  That’s the advantage of online writing, right?

Absolutely.  But there is also an advantage with zoning in on your own country every now and then.  Sometimes I get work from clients that are specifically looking for a UK based writer.  If a certain level of knowledge is needed that can only really be found from a UK writer (or whatever country you are in), then make no mistake – you will have a much better chance of getting that particular job.  It also gives you a chance to add that skill to your list.

You might think it’s a bit unfair as writers in other countries won’t get a look in.  But then, if you are reading this from somewhere in the US and you see a writing gig advertised which asks for a US based writer, I won’t get a look in there.  It does work both ways.

So if you find writing work online that isn’t suitable for you and your location, don’t dwell on it.  Go and find some that gives you the upper hand instead.  There will be less competition, and it might just be the writing job you have been waiting for.

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

I’ve been writing all kinds of different articles today – I even did ten pages of an eBook I’m writing for a regular client too.  But I have also done a small bi-weekly job for a blog owner.

And that is what gave me the idea for this blog post.  You see, people always say that earning money as a freelance writer is fraught with danger.  You never know when your next job is coming in.  You don’t know how much it will be for.  And so on.

And that’s why it pays to try and find some regular jobs if you can.  You know the kind of thing – five blog posts a week; one long article every Monday morning (that’s one of my regulars!), and perhaps a batch of ten articles on a specific subject every month.

Regular writing jobs can pay the mortgage

Those are the kinds of jobs you want to try and cultivate if you can.  That way, even if you do have a quiet week you know you have a certain amount of regular work waiting for you.  If I have a quiet period I either try and pull in a bit more work, or I get ahead of myself with the regular weekly and monthly jobs.  Clients like it if you deliver early!  And it frees up my schedule for when the next new lot of work comes in.

So think about doing this yourself if you can.  Don’t make everything a regular job, but look out for them and grab them with both hands when they show up.

Footnote – I’m having a weekend off this week.  We’re off to Legoland in Windsor (more fool us!) tomorrow, so I think I’ll need Sunday to recover!  See you back here next week for more blogging.  Have a good one!

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

This thought occurred to me today as I was writing a batch of articles for a client.  It was one of those jobs where you aren’t given any article titles to work from; they just give you a list of their best performing keywords and the rest is up to you.  Sometimes that makes the job easier, and sometimes it doesn’t!

But it did make me think about my opinion of SEO – search engine optimisation – when I first started writing for online markets.  Basically, I didn’t have an opinion – because I didn’t know what SEO was.

Say hello to SEO!

Now admittedly I still know a lot less than many of these ‘web gurus’ you bump into online.  But I know the basics and then some.  And it has undoubtedly helped me in my online writing career.  You see, there are so many people around that need articles and blog posts written in order to attract traffic to their website.  And if you can write those articles, you’ll be in high demand as a web writer.

The instructions I get for various SEO writing jobs vary a lot.  Sometimes I’ll get a list of keywords.  On other occasions I have had very specific details, telling me exactly what percentage of keywords the article has to have, and where exactly they should be placed.  It was all quite daunting at first, but now I can accommodate (and perhaps more importantly understand) why clients are very specific with their needs.

But here’s what I wanted to tell you – my learning curve has really been self taught.  I stumbled over SEO and so I looked it up to find out more about it.  And as I learned and got my first few SEO writing jobs, so they led to others, and to more knowledge about this aspect of online writing.

So if this is new to you, try doing some research on it yourself.  Let me get you off to a good start by recommending this multi-part article on SEO Chat.  And don’t worry if it doesn’t all make sense at first – it didn’t to me either!

But it does now.

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

This just popped into my mind as I’m actually doing a bit of both today.  I have a 170+ page book to write for a regular client, and about eight articles to write for another regular of mine.

Piling up the pages of a new book...

So it got me thinking.  Is one type of writing job better than the other, or is it best to do a bit of both?

Let’s start by being mercenary about it.  In terms of payment, articles generally pay more because they are shorter.  Books are usually paid for per page, and it works out to be less than you would get for an article of the same length.  The reason is because the eBook is generally a lot longer of course – you are essentially trading off the higher payment for the safety of knowing you have a larger body of work to complete.

But I find they require a different mindset as well.  With a batch of articles I usually start with the easiest one (for me) and then progress through the batch at random.  With an eBook you can’t really do that – although on occasion I have been known to complete a later chapter or skip ahead if ‘ve been stuck on one specific bit for some reason.

EBooks are wonderful to write if I like the subject matter, I am engaged with what I am writing and I can write undisturbed.  This enables me to really get into it, and I generally enjoy the work once I get started.  For some reason I always find it harder to get the ball rolling though – and I’ve never figured out why.  I think it’s just the thought of having all those pages to do!

Articles don’t present the same challenges in the same way as eBooks do.  I work out how many I need to be writing each day, and off I go.  If I need to stop to go out for some reason, I can just finish the article I’m on and pick up again when I get back.  You need to be very disciplined to write an eBook, because you have your set number of pages to do – say, a hundred – and you have your deadline – let’s say a month – and then it’s up to you to deliver it on time.  For me, I just work out how many working days I have and then figure out how many pages to do each day.  I still have to sit down and get started though!

So I guess I’m saying that I’m sitting on the fence with regard to the question posed in the title of this post.  Where are you sitting?  Do you prefer the brevity of articles and the higher payment they should command (provided you are visiting the right websites), or do you like getting your teeth into a good eBook and waiting for the nice payment that comes at the end?

I think in the end I like to have a balance of both going on.

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

Well they certainly seem to.  After my decision to cut back on eBooks and focus more on articles, the first week of doing so has made a huge difference to my earnings.  Which is very good on what will soon be the run up to Christmas!

I have actually started thinking about Christmas already since I sold three articles on that very subject the other day.  That’s boosted the coffers as well, and having just taken another large job on writing web pages there seems to be no end in sight, thankfully.  Getting the balance right between writing various articles for various people and writing eBooks, press releases and web pages is a difficult job sometimes, but I think I have found a good compromise.

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

Well they say a change is as good as a rest, and that’s certainly what I’m having at the moment.  I’ve lost count of how many eBooks I have written for various people this year (and I still have two on the go and three more slated to write for another client), so I felt it was time for a change and a swing back towards articles again.

As you can see from the last couple of posts it’s definitely working! lol  It’s enabled me to tackle some different subjects as well which is wonderful as it’s really revitalised me again.  It just goes to show that making a definite decision to change does do you good.  I have about four or five main suppliers of writing work as well as a few assorted other ones, so I’ve been able to request a different type of job for a while and that has worked very well indeed.

My biggest paying client only ever sends articles and they can be on all kinds of subjects – I never say no to those as the money is so good.  But it seems like a slew of articles on all kinds of things is now coming in and it’s great fun going from one topic to another each day.  What better way to charge your writing batteries than to tackle a new topic for once?

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