Is It Possible to Make a Living Out of Freelance Writing Online?
If you're wondering whether you could make a living as a freelance writer then you need to work out what sort of writing you want to do, and whether there is a market for it.
If you are hoping to make a living as a freelance writer you need to be aware that building a career as a writer takes time and a great deal of effort (as well as a bit of luck).
You also need to ask yourself two or three important questions - firstly, could you actually find the willpower and time to move from doing something which you probably do at the moment for fun, to something you need to do all day, every day, on demand? Secondly, work out if there is enough money in it for you, if you could cope with the small income that all freelance writers begin with when they are starting out, and if you have enough savings to keep you while you wait for your first job? And thirdly, are you good enough to get work in an extremely competitive market? If you are looking at all the opportunities online, you need to be aware that of the millions of people writing online, probably 99.
5% are doing it for free.
That's not to say there is not a massive amount of online writing work available to freelancers these days.
If you are a good writer and have knowledge of SEO or experience in journalism or copywriting then you should be able to find a regular income from online writing alone.
But you do need some kind of experience.
If you don't have experience then you need to build up a collection of writings, probably through your own blogs or through contributing regularly to other people's blogs.
Once you have some experience you then need to decide where you're going to concentrate your efforts.
Do you want to concentrate on blogging, article writing, online journalism, or copywriting? After that you need to work out where to look for work to get your freelance writing career started.
This is where online job forums can help.
Online job forums have opened up the contracting market in each and every country to a global workforce.
Whichever field you work or specialise in, there will be work available via the internet.
The sites with the best reputation for writing are Sologig, Virtual Assistants, Guru.
com, Odesk and Elance.
Normally there will be a category specifically dedicated to writing - in Elance for example there is the 'Writing & Translation' category.
These are a great place for new writers to get their break and get noticed.
However the problem with such sites is there are a lot of people trying to win the same jobs and when you start out you have to combine both a brilliant proposal and a low bid to win jobs.
Once you are established you can raise your rates but at first you should bid low just to get your career going.
Lastly, once you have some experience under your belt, look out for large companies who are willing to pay pro-bloggers to update their weekly blogs.
All you have to do for these jobs is rewrite company news that they give you and blog in the company style that they ask for.
Get yourself on the writing ladder and you'll soon see there are a number of writing jobs out there to pay the rent.
If you are hoping to make a living as a freelance writer you need to be aware that building a career as a writer takes time and a great deal of effort (as well as a bit of luck).
You also need to ask yourself two or three important questions - firstly, could you actually find the willpower and time to move from doing something which you probably do at the moment for fun, to something you need to do all day, every day, on demand? Secondly, work out if there is enough money in it for you, if you could cope with the small income that all freelance writers begin with when they are starting out, and if you have enough savings to keep you while you wait for your first job? And thirdly, are you good enough to get work in an extremely competitive market? If you are looking at all the opportunities online, you need to be aware that of the millions of people writing online, probably 99.
5% are doing it for free.
That's not to say there is not a massive amount of online writing work available to freelancers these days.
If you are a good writer and have knowledge of SEO or experience in journalism or copywriting then you should be able to find a regular income from online writing alone.
But you do need some kind of experience.
If you don't have experience then you need to build up a collection of writings, probably through your own blogs or through contributing regularly to other people's blogs.
Once you have some experience you then need to decide where you're going to concentrate your efforts.
Do you want to concentrate on blogging, article writing, online journalism, or copywriting? After that you need to work out where to look for work to get your freelance writing career started.
This is where online job forums can help.
Online job forums have opened up the contracting market in each and every country to a global workforce.
Whichever field you work or specialise in, there will be work available via the internet.
The sites with the best reputation for writing are Sologig, Virtual Assistants, Guru.
com, Odesk and Elance.
Normally there will be a category specifically dedicated to writing - in Elance for example there is the 'Writing & Translation' category.
These are a great place for new writers to get their break and get noticed.
However the problem with such sites is there are a lot of people trying to win the same jobs and when you start out you have to combine both a brilliant proposal and a low bid to win jobs.
Once you are established you can raise your rates but at first you should bid low just to get your career going.
Lastly, once you have some experience under your belt, look out for large companies who are willing to pay pro-bloggers to update their weekly blogs.
All you have to do for these jobs is rewrite company news that they give you and blog in the company style that they ask for.
Get yourself on the writing ladder and you'll soon see there are a number of writing jobs out there to pay the rent.
