Freelance Writing: An Additional Path to Income

Many children’s authors or book writers in other genres realize that making money writing books may not be what many envision it to be. So, if as a writer you want to make money to either supplement your income or earn an income, you might think about other writing paths in addition to authoring books.

One such path is freelance writing.

According to Wikipedia, “the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, approximately 10.3 million workers in the US (7.4% of the US workforce) are independent contractors. In the past three years, companies have increased their outsourcing by 22% on the internet.”

These figures are rising every year as more and more businesses realize the necessity of marketing online.

Essentially, a freelance writer is self-employed. He or she looks for magazines that accept submissions or maybe businesses and marketers who are looking for writers, although this area may fall more under ghostwriting which is a form of freelance writing.

Simply put, in a freelance capacity, you will write for pay, whether with a byline or as a ghostwriter, and you will search for entities that are willing to pay for your services.

To get started in this area, you should establish yourself as a freelance writer; this will help you harness paying jobs. The best way to do this is to create a website that is devoted to you as a freelance writer. You may want to blog about topics you excel in, whether marketing, health, business, or other. Show the potential client what you are capable of, and post content on a regular basis.

You will also need to search freelance job boards. You can find job boards by doing an online search. In addition, you might ask writer acquaintances or friends for information in this area, since you want to make sure the job board site is reputable.

Another area to promote your freelance business and expertise is in social networks such as Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter.

With persistence, you may see you’re first freelance job.

Be careful though, before you accept a job it’s important to know your value; don’t under value your writing talent, or under estimate the work involved in a particular project. Writing a 500 word article for $10 is not the way to go, considering it may take you one to two hours to complete if you need to do research.

Your best course of action is to decide what fee you are willing to write for, and then stick to your guns. Often, once you fall into the writing-for-peanuts-pit, it can become difficult to get out, so seek quality writing jobs.

Once you’ve landed one or more clients, it’s important to manage your time effectively. You will need to put business first and other writing and social networking second. Now, this does not mean you can neglect other aspects of writing, such as working on your next book if you are an author, or marketing your freelance services and marketing your available books, it simply means take care of the writing that brings in an income first.

Next, to generate more business, ask satisfied clients for testimonials and post them on your website. If you are ghostwriting, this may be difficult to accomplish, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

One final note, write quality content no matter what the writing assignment. This effort will lead to long-term clients and referrals.