Writing Blog

Thou shalt not venture into unknown areas 

This goes beyond just telling a client you know everything about a topic when you don’t. It means that if you are a writer, don’t tell him you’ll get his website done as well – not unless you know how to do it. Stick to your area of expertise and do it well. If you venture into new fields, make sure you know enough before you offer to do something along those lines for a client. The same with areas like SEO, directory submissions or anything that you are not yet comfortable with. The client is not paying you to experiment. He’s paying you because he thinks you know how to do whatever he’s asked you to.

 Thou shalt not pass work to others without permission 

A client might be giving you work because he likes the way you write, because he trusts you or because he knows he can count on you. You have an awful lot of work to finish off so you think: Why not, let me advertise on the Internet and give out some of it. I’ve always found it’s better to check with the client first. That way, he knows that you are outsourcing it and it won’t be a shock if he finds out. The virtual world is much smaller than you think – there are many professional freelance writers but you tend to bump into each other at some point of time in cyberspace. Ask if you can outsource it – many clients will be okay with that as long as you run your eye over it before sending it to him.

 Thou shalt not plagiarise 

So easy to do in this world of information at the touch of a button. Don’t, please don’t yield to temptation and pass off someone’s work as your own. The time of reckoning always comes round, if not sooner then most definitely later.

$1000 a month? An easy target in a couple of months after you make that break. With luck, it could be three times that amount. Much, much more for the great writers. With time and effort, the money will come. The thing is to go get a handful of clients who pay well and who you are comfortable with. Then stay loyal to them. Until of course, something really big that you just can’t say No to comes along. Even then, stay in touch with your clients. Find them another writer online if you have to move on. Trust me, they’ll never forget. And never mind what people might say about the impersonal nature of the Internet, about how it is an emotionless, faceless world bereft of a lot of the decency we grew up with, I beg to differ. There are wonderful people out there too – just like in real life. There are some fabulous clients out there – you just need to look, find them and then stick with them. You need to make sure you have clients who treat you right – and you need to reciprocate as well. 

I said it before, I’ll say it again – like Bruce, you try, try, try again and you’ll get there. Add a bit of patience to that and you’ll get there in a better frame of mind. And don’t forget to stir in a bit of that sense of humour to make the journey there much more pleasant. 

Here are a few sites you can begin with. 

Guru

Elance

Scriptlance

Getafreelancer 

There are many more out there but these are great for making that first break. Start off with low bids – you need to build up that all-important feedback. Once a few clients are happy with your work and they post up feedback about you, you’re in. Then it’s up to you and what you can do to get to the next level. Being a big fish in a small pond is not a bad way to rise above the heap. 

This is an absolute must. When you make a commitment, a week’s deadline is just that – a week. Better still, 6 days. Not 10 days, two weeks, maybe never? If you don’t honour deadlines, you are going to be leaving a lot of disgruntled clients in your wake – and that means so many fewer job opportunities. When clients feel they can trust you to be responsible, they will always come back. 

Make sure you check your copy well before you send it off. Keep your Spell Checker on and run through it twice after putting your ‘Zoom into Page’ at 150%. That way, the errors will jump off the page. Then put your work through a plagiarism checker. There are two free ones I use: PlagiarismDetect and articlechecker. Of course, the ideal thing to do when you have started writing and making a few bucks is to go join up the paid service of Copyscape.

I’ll club this and having a sense of humour together as they are really two sides of the same coin in this game. They are also absolute essentials in your freelance finding crusade. Don’t get disheartened – so many others have walked down that same path and they are doing so well today! Don’t let just a handful of crazy clients spoil your day. Don’t let snooty established online writers frighten you away either – there’s place for everyone who can write in this ever-expanding world of cyber opportunity. 

Learn to laugh – at the things that happen out there on the internet and at yourself. Do that and you’ll survive – and well at that. The road to freelance writing can be tough but it always feels better if you walk along it with a smile and maybe even a chuckle or two.  Just savour the thought that once you break into those hallowed ranks, you’ll have so much work, you’ll be saying No to people. Go join a few writing forums ad you’ll find that it helps to vent a bit about clients and low paid jobs – or maybe even the fact that you aren’t getting any. People are so helpful and I’ve had 19 and 20 year olds guide me to all the right places where you can find a lot of work. They still pop by to see how I’m doing – in return, I offer to proofread and edit their web sites for them – it’s the least I can do for these sweet young kids. 

Do not allow yourself to be taken for a ride by scamsters. They do abound – even on the writing sites. They advertise and ask for bidders to do a test sample. Say they get 25 bids on the project they have posted. Five are rather bad so they are left with 20. They ask each bidder to do two samples, making sure they give all of them different topics. At the end of the day, they’ve gotten away with 40 well written articles while you’re left wondering where on earth the client has disappeared to!

And where is he? Gone to set up his website that deals with the latest ‘hot’ keyword with his spanking new articles. These scamsters rarely do it to the regular writers knowing full well that you can find out where they have been posted up – what they do is pick on the newbies. So if he asks you for a sample, don’t do it. 

Don’t fall for those ‘How to learn to write in a day/week/month’ e-books either. You’re much better off trusting your own instincts – and there are so many free online articles that talk about how to get there – so don’t waste your money.

Pack up all those samples in your virtual sample kit bag and you’re all ready to go. You will need 3 to 5 samples – you do not need to include more – clients usually don’t have time to read. The ideal thing to do would be to write five samples - these could deal with a varied lot of topics – then take each first paragraph or maybe two paragraphs and put them together. What the client would like from your samples is to get a feel of your writing style. If you want to put your samples up online, go to weebly.com or lycos.com and set up a free site for your samples. They have user-friendly tools and you’ll find it’s so easy to set up. Or search the Internet for any other sites that allow you to put a free website up. Then all you have to do is to add a URL to that site so the client can go take a look.

If you can’t write, don’t. You’ll be doing yourself and everyone else a favour. Seriously, if you don’t know the difference between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ or ‘there’ and ‘their’, go write a blog and express yourself. It would be unfair to write for a client and expect him to pay.  (That is not to say your blog won’t make you rich and famous – if you have something to say that people want to hear about, never mind what your grasp of the language is, they’ll come and read. Look at many of those technical blogs out there – they could maybe get someone to proofread and edit them but the fact remains that they have a hold on those virtual eyeballs.) 

However, if you are going to get paid for your writing, make sure you can write. At least passably. No one’s looking for an Ernest Hemingway on the Internet - but you have to realise that bad writing can distract a reader from the actual content that needs to be communicated.