Freelance Writing Advice – How To Start As A Freelance Writer

For many beginning freelance writers, or individuals who want to break into freelance writing, getting started is often the hardest part. If you’ve never made a sale, this process can be very intimidating. For freelance writers looking to get started, there are several things to consider.

First, what type of writing do you want to do? What kind of writing do you have experience writing? Being a niche expert can be a very good way of making enough of a name for yourself to score some higher paying jobs, but that takes time to build up, and being a writer who can take on any type of writing can also help you find work and lead to a higher income.

A second consideration is what you’re looking for. Are you only interested in a part time income, or do you need this to be a full time profession? Either way, some of the beginning steps are the same, and here is some advice to get you started as a freelance writer.

#1: Just get started! I spent months and months researching, looking up data, trying to figure out the best way to break into freelance writing. Then a car accident damaged both of my legs badly, and out of necessity I had to get started. I found out from there that there’s no better advice than simply getting started. You can’t sell writing you haven’t written yet.

#2: Write Online. There are tons of opportunities online for writers. Constant-Content, Associated Content, and Helium are all places where you can start writing immediately and get paid. Squidoo is another place where you can do the same by writing and setting up “lenses” (think simple web pages). This can get you money and exposure.

#3: Have short and long term goals already figured out. Short term goals might be to get a small amount of sold articles every day online and sending out 3-4 queries a day to magazines. A long term goal might be going from lots of low level Internet articles to several higher paying magazine articles.

#4: Learn how to sell and re-sell your usage rights articles to get the most out of each and every one of your articles. This is critical to building your freelance income.

#5: Spend some time every single day looking for new work. When you get busy this can be difficult, but a common mistake is to get a lot of work done, then realize you not only have no more work lined up, but you didn’t send any queries out. This hurts you in both the short and long term.

These five tips hopefully gave you some good advice to get you started as a freelance writer.